The committee met at 8:33 a.m.

[Peter Milobar in the chair.]

Peter Milobar (Chair): Good morning, everyone. I will call this meeting to order.

My name is Peter Milobar. I’m the MLA for Kamloops Centre and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

I’d like to acknowledge we are meeting today on the traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking People, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

The purpose of today’s meeting is to receive follow-up from ministries on four Office of the Auditor General reports. This afternoon we will be considering two reports from the Office of the Auditor General.

First, we’ll hear on the follow-up report on the status of implementation of recommendations in the Office of the Auditor General’s report Access to Emergency Health Services, 2019. I’ll turn it over to the Office of the Auditor General, and then we’ll also hear from the Ministry of Health and B.C. emergency health services before jumping into questions.

[8:35 a.m.]

Follow-up on Implementation
of Recommendations in
Auditor General Reports

Access to Emergency Health Services

Sheila Dodds: Thank you, Chair, and good morning, Members.

This audit was tabled in 2019. Our annual follow-up report that was released earlier this year identified the progress that the ministry had made as of…. I think it was March 31. But I don’t really have anything to comment. It’s really for the ministry and BCEHS to speak to the progress since the follow-up report.

Peter Milobar (Chair): I’ll turn it over to you guys.

Ian Rongve: Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Ian Rongve. I’m an assistant deputy minister in the B.C. Ministry of Health. I’ve got Eugene Johnson, an executive director within the ministry, and then Paul Vallely, who is the chief quality planning and coordination officer within the B.C. emergency health services.

We’re talking about the audit that was done in 2019. On slide 2, we’re talking about the B.C. emergency health services performance measures for response times, clinical care, performance against those measures, the changes planned or underway to improve services, and then an additional consideration of the EHS coordination with fire department first responders.

We received four recommendations, three of them targeted at EHS and four really targeted at the ministry and at EHS. We have accepted all of them, and we’ve made progress on all of them. As of May, two of them are complete, and the other two are really in ongoing operations. We’ll talk a little bit about that. We are continuing to work on recommendation 3 and recommendation 4.

Recommendation 1 was accepted and is complete: that EHS review its performance management framework to identify additional indicators for timeliness and clinical quality. In March 2020, EHS created a performance management framework to promote more efficient, effective management of the Ambulance Service, including 11 indicators for response time, service hours and clinical quality.

As we’ve learned more over the last five years, those are continuously reviewed. That’s a big part of what Paul does in his job around quality. That has been accepted, is complete and is in continuous implementation, so to speak, within EHS.

Recommendation 2 is that BCEHS determine an appropriate level of pre-hospital advanced care coverage that considers patient need and then implements strategies. A lot of analysis has occurred. This looks at the data and looks at demand from the various communities. A number of resources have been added as a result of the work around this recommendation.

First off, during the pandemic, the emergency health services put positions into place near the COVID community cohort centres. If you recall, those were centres that we established for people from rural and remote areas to get close to acute care facilities, in case their disease progressed and they required acute care too — making those facilities available and putting the patient transport resources close to those communities so that we could get them to hospital, if they needed, very quickly.

Since then we’ve done the data analysis talking about and looking at demand and capacity and at more appropriately matching demand to capacity. In June 2022 we added 18 advanced care paramedic positions as permanent resources. They remain placed strategically around the province, based on where the data says that they will be best allocated.

[8:40 a.m.]

Each of the following stations has two advanced care paramedic positions: Campbell River, Whistler, Penticton, Trail, Cranbrook, Williams Lake, Terrace, Fort St. John and Salmon Arm. So we would say that this recommendation is complete and is in ongoing operations.

Recommendation 3 is that BCEHS improve transparency and accountability by publicly reporting on its targets and performance. A few things have happened around that. BCEHS created a progress report to document its annual achievements, and this publicly available report is aligned around their strategic plan. It includes key performance indicators and targets for response times in metro and in urban areas.

Within the Ministry of Health, we have adopted ambulance in-service hours. These indicators are publicly reported in the Ministry of Health service plan and their service plan report. BCEHS continues to expand reporting, and that’s why we would call this substantially complete. We’re continuing to expand the indicators that we use and are on track to make another significant improvement this year in the public reporting on targets and performance.

The last recommendation was targeted at the ministry and EHS. It recommended that the Ministry of Health work with local governments and BCEHS to ensure that BCEHS can implement a coordinated approach to pre-hospital care that results in medical oversight, data sharing, signed agreements and confirmation that first responders are being notified of events.

This is the interaction of the Ambulance Service with other first responders, and we are absolutely working on this. Out of this report, the Pre-Hospital Care Collaborative Committee was formed to identify a pathway to get there. It’s a very large job. The committee drafted a discussion paper in 2022. From May to July, consultation took place to gather feedback on the approach outlined in the discussion paper. A service agreement template was drafted and endorsed in 2024 and was piloted, I believe, in Surrey.

EHS and the ministry have now been working through the list of 300 local governments that may or may not decide to sign on to an agreement with BCEHS. This is ongoing work, and with 300, it will be a rolling process that just continues. It’s important to stress that on this one, progress depends on the willingness both within the government and EHS and within local governments, because it is certainly voluntary on the part of local governments.

We will continue to report out on an annual basis, and we want to thank the Auditor General and the teams that worked on this report. I think there’s no doubt that we have made some improvements in ambulance service as a result of it.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Thank you very much. Questions from the committee?

Larry Neufeld: Good morning, and thanks for being here. We heard of 18 advanced care positions. Are any of those currently open, or have they all been filled?

Paul Vallely: I don’t have that level of detail. If there are any vacant positions, BCEHS is continually, actively hiring, and our intent is to hire into any vacant positions. Understandably, staff come, and they go eventually and retire on. So we are always in a constant state of hiring paramedics.

We’ve hired over 1,500 to 2,000 paramedics in the last three to five years to meet the needs of increased service across the province in the various communities, including having changed our staffing model, which has contributed to our success in the increased service hours that the ministry has spoken to in the Ministry of Health service plan.

This has been ongoing work, it continues to be ongoing, and we continue to further increase ambulance in-service hours and staffing, as we go forward to meet the ever-growing call volume in the province of B.C. to serve the communities.

[8:45 a.m.]

Larry Neufeld: Thank you for that answer. There’s nothing out of the ordinary? It would just be normal turnover.

Paul Vallely: Correct. In addition, if I could maybe add, this work, as Ian has mentioned, is continuously ongoing. We’ve recently added acute care paramedics to Dawson Creek, temporary ACP paramedics to Port Alberni to support the community needs there, and we’re in the process of implementing additional acute care paramedics in Delta as well, to meet those needs.

Mable Elmore: It’s not explicitly on the report, but where does training for paramedics take place? Do you know? I’m just curious as to where they get trained up.

Ian Rongve: I’m going to say the Justice Institute of British Columbia. That is my belief. Yes.

Mable Elmore: Justice Institute. That’s what I thought, yeah. I know it’s not explicitly on the report. I was just curious.

With respect to, Paul, hiring and the challenges and pressures around that, you had referenced the increased service hours but also the salary model. Can you talk to that, on the effectiveness of the ability to hire? I know that that has been expressed as a concern.

You know, I first want to say I appreciate the support of our ambulance service right across the province.

Just speak to that in the context of…. I know we’re talking 2019, but certainly, it’s an evolving challenge, a lot of pressures. Just fill me in on that.

Paul Vallely: Yeah, thank you for the question. I guess the best way to explain that is that pre-2019, the majority of the rural and remote communities in B.C. had what we refer to as an on-call or casual staffing model. That covered two-thirds of the province.

What that did for paramedics is that they were essentially working an on-call pattern, typically needing to work for other employers, either in industry or other sectors, for employment, This also then limited their availability to staff on-call shifts. Like many people, obviously, they need to afford to live, pay their bills, support their families.

What we’ve done since 2019, in partnership with the Ambulance Paramedics of British Columbia and CUPE 873, the paramedics union, is to start the work to improve our staffing model and to convert that to regularized permanent positions, whether full-time or regular part-time, to provide a livable wage, if you will, for paramedics around the province, in most communities.

That work has continued. We’ve evolved that staffing model. You may or may not be familiar with the scheduled on-call model that we brought in, starting in 2019, from the collective agreement with CUPE 873. That has since evolved, in the last round of collective bargaining, to a mixed-shift model and, certainly, adding more full-time 24-7 ambulances in many, many communities around the province.

We are now an ambulance service that has reversed that ratio, if you will, of reliance on on-call positions. We are largely a full-time and regularly staffed ambulance service, which has been the key success factor in driving our recruitment and also increasing the in-service hours, which really speaks to the availability of ambulances to be able to respond to the ever-growing call volume, which doesn’t seem to slow down.

We’ve been responsive to that, but obviously, it’s an ongoing challenge. We keep seeing increased call volumes, ever since the pandemic started and, certainly, the heat dome in 2021. We’re meeting that challenge as best as we can and continually try to evolve this service and increase our staffing and in-service availability for communities around the province.

Mable Elmore: Thank you. We’re discussing 2019, and that was the first year to really implement it, yeah. So five years around that. I didn’t realize it was three-fourths of the province that was covered by…. Well, paramedics had to be passionate about their career, prior to that. That was just my comment.

[8:50 a.m.]

Kiel Giddens: Thanks very much for the presentation and the update on this.

On recommendation 3, for the public reporting of response times, I’m wondering if the ministry could just clarify what the threshold is for metro and urban areas and what the long-term intention would be for smaller communities in B.C., I guess, based on that threshold.

Paul Vallely: Thank you for the question. The threshold or target for immediately life-threatening calls is nine minutes or less.

Last fiscal that number, the median response times in metro and urban communities, was seven minutes and 37 seconds. Previously we were reporting on metro and urban only. As part of the work going forward, the plan is to share those metrics across the province to include rural and remote communities as well.

We’re currently going through an approval process, as the ministry has spoken to. We’re expanding that transparency on public reporting. We have a number of metrics that will be public-facing, and we expect those to be in place on the BCEHS website, for access by the public, before the end of December 2025, this year.

Kiel Giddens: That’s excellent, because this is a very important recommendation, obviously, for resource planning and making sure that we’re filling any gaps.

Just one follow-up: for metro and urban areas, what’s the size threshold of communities that the ministry uses in that? I just want to understand that so that we know where we’re at now versus where we’d like to get to for the rural communities.

Paul Vallely: Yeah. It’s a good question. I don’t know that I have a definitive answer in terms of community size, because they vary quite a lot.

We’re talking communities such as, obviously, the greater Vancouver area, greater Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell River, Kamloops, Kelowna, Prince George, Williams Lake, etc. — larger urban and metro communities. But we will be intending to share reporting out on the rural, small and remote communities as well, going forward, once we implement this at the end of December.

Kiel Giddens: Just one more question, on recommendation 4. I appreciate the update, and that is going to be a lot of work on this recommendation still — obviously, for 300 communities, going through and signing those agreements. I guess I’d be curious to know what barriers communities are communicating that may be a challenge for them — to participate or even to provide feedback.

I just noted that in the pilot project between September and December 2024, there were eight of the 19 communities that provided feedback at all. Were there any reasons why communities chose not to participate? Is there anything that would help communities to be able to engage and have capacity to participate, to be able to get feedback or to sign agreements?

Eugene Johnson: I’ll just take that. The response and readiness of different communities vary considerably in relation to the size and complexity of the first-responder service that they’re running. The agreements are dependent on some kind of shared agreement between BCEHS and the first-responder organization around things like what the response model is going to be, the medical oversight for that and any kind of training requirements.

In the cases of some communities, there’s an evolving discussion within the municipality about the level of response that they want their first responders going to, in terms of the severity of the 911 calls that are coming in. For the most part, I think that issue is one where BCEHS and communities are usually able to come to an agreement on what’s going to work.

[8:55 a.m.]

More challenging are smaller communities that have smaller, volunteer-based fire services. In this case a number of them have cited ongoing concerns with their capacity to offer training, particularly with the changes in the scope of practice that happened for all emergency medical assistants licensing levels as of a couple of years ago.

In some of those cases, they’re not necessarily comfortable with some of the expectations that BCEHS would have for an organization signing on to the agreement. Those ones may take quite a while to reach a resolution, depending on what the municipality feels they have, in terms of capacity.

George Chow: Following up on the same question with my colleague regarding training, it was mentioned that the Justice Institute is the only one that trains paramedics. Are there private organizations and institutes that train paramedics?

Eugene Johnson: There are a few. Columbia is a private training school that offers training in both the primary care paramedic as well as the advanced care paramedic. There is a small institution called AET that does a few primary care paramedics. Then I believe Sprott Shaw College has recently started up a primary care paramedic program.

George Chow: How are these trainers able to…? Well, do they meet certain standards? Who oversees these training colleges? Does the student go through an exam? How does that work?

I have young people who come to me and say: “Hey, I want to become a paramedic.” I didn’t really know much about how you actually become a paramedic. So there are actually private institutes? What is the role of the Justice Institute then?

Eugene Johnson: All of these training institutions have the same role, which is essentially to prepare their students for qualification for EMA licensing. The training institutions are overseen under the Ministry of Post-Secondary and Future Skills. But the licensing regime is done by the EMA licensing board, which is connected to the Ministry of Health.

There’s an independent licensing exam that occurs for people to qualify for the different levels of emergency medical assistants. In order to be hired into BCEHS, depending on the nature of the position they’re looking for, you need to have certain licence levels in good standing.

George Chow: Yes. Okay. Thank you. That’s helpful.

Ian Rongve: You asked about the Justice Institute. The Justice Institute is one of the publicly funded post-graduate organizations within British Columbia. The other ones that Eugene was talking about are private companies that are offering training. They both do it. They both do the same job. Graduates of them all, once they pass the licensing exam, are equivalent.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the report and the responses and for the work that you folks do. It’s so critical. I live in a semi-rural community that really depends on the emergency health services.

My question is actually about the advanced care. You mentioned placing 18, and then you’ve mentioned the expansion of that. I’m wondering. What is the scope for developing an analysis for change? How do you determine where someone should go, when you should maybe move an advanced care paramedic, or when you should place them in a certain community?

[9:00 a.m.]

Paul Vallely: Yeah. That’s a good question — thank you — and a very big question. We’re constantly analyzing the data around community needs as well as working with our partners within the broader health care system or the health authorities, especially around the quarters of care, especially to meet the needs of inter-facility transfers of patients that are higher acuity.

That work is ongoing. We’re currently doing that work in partnership and with support of the ministry to try to meet the care needs of each individual area or health authority of the province. That is continually evolving. I’m hoping that we will be continuing to add more acute care paramedics in the rural and remote communities.

Pre-2019 it was rare to have seen an acute care paramedic anywhere outside of a large urban or metro setting. Over that past five years or so, we’ve made a significant step forward in our ability to do that. We have a number of paramedics who are interested in furthering their education from a primary care paramedic perspective and pursuing advanced-care paramedic education.

Not all of them — for various reasons, understandably — want to move to a metro or urban community, because they want to stay close to or within their rural or remote community that they’re coming from. So we’re currently looking at a process in partnership with the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C. to orientate current ACP licence holders who currently don’t hold a position as an acute care paramedic to enable that in the various communities across the province.

That’s a substantial piece of work that we’re working on, and we’re hoping to see that further evolve and improve the availability of acute care paramedics in other communities around the province.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): I’m probably not going to get all the terms correct in my follow-up. Specifically, I’m wondering about almost the use of a hybrid model of this.

On a number of Gulf Islands, for instance, we have people who are volunteer, paid on call firefighters who are the first responders in communities, who are often left in awkward positions because they’re only allowed to be trained to a certain level. But they’re waiting for a boat or a helicopter that may or may not be able to arrive because of weather, with a patient that they feel that they could almost, with a little bit more training, be able to administer life-saving medications to.

Because of the current standards or — I’m not entirely sure — all the boxes that everyone has to fit into, they’re not able to do that. When you’re talking about advanced care paramedics being placed in different parts of the province — looking at the metrics or the demographics and how you change them — is there also looking at different models of being able to provide care to people who are in remote communities while they wait for more advanced care to come to them?

Paul Vallely: Good question. Thank you.

One of the most significant improvements that we’ve done over the last number of years is that we’ve expanded, through the Emergency Medical Assistants Licensing Board, the scope of practice of paramedics, specifically at all licence levels but considerably at the primary care paramedic level, to be able to do more skills and procedures, if you will, to include other drug therapies or cardiac monitoring, as an example, where we may not have to use an acute paramedic.

One of the challenges or issues with small, small communities…. I started as a paramedic in a very, very small community — a village, in fact — and enjoyed and loved working within the community. The challenge then is the call volume to maintain the skill and the competency of the advanced skills. That is the real challenge.

We’re looking to develop what our competency framework is going to look like to support improving higher levels of care in smaller or isolated communities. That is the key challenge that we are continually working on: how best to support paramedics that do want to do those types of jobs in small communities.

We specifically added a number of rural acute care community paramedics — that was contained in our update — and have done an evaluation of that in partnership with the University of Northern B.C. This validated that those acute care paramedics are filling care gaps, to your point, in small rural and remote communities.

[9:05 a.m.]

The trick is how we ensure that we’re best supporting the provider. It can be a daunting task, as you described, when you’re waiting for an aircraft or a boat or a ferry and you’re caring for a patient for extended periods of time. That can be a distinct challenge.

But we do have, also, a good support network for community paramedics. We refer to it as CliniCall, where paramedics have access to a paramedic specialist, who is an acute care paramedic, to help guide and support that care in any place around the province and has also access to an emergency physician online support individual, a medical doctor, to help with those care needs and those decisions and that patient care planning for those types of situations.

Eugene Johnson: I would add to what Paul was saying, just in clarification. He mentioned the expansion of scope of practice which applied to all emergency medical assistance licence levels. That would include the first responders who we’re referencing in these small communities.

Those first-responder organizations do not have any kind of training constraint put on them by the Ministry of Health or BCEHS. That does remain a municipal decision as to what level of EMA licence level they want to have staffed in their community, what they can support with regard to necessary equipment and training. But when we are talking about firefighters, that remains, ultimately, a municipal decision as to how that’s managed.

Larry Neufeld: As a person who has spent the vast majority of my life in northern and smaller communities, I’m quite pleased, quite impressed with what I’m hearing here this morning, so thank you for that.

My question would be around, with the amazing things that I’ve heard: how has that affected the budget? Have we doubled or…? Give me a range of how that’s affected the budget. Are we able to keep pace with the things I’m hearing through the budgetary process?

Ian Rongve: I will just say it’s under strain, as the health system is. In terms of actual, I know it has…. Paul talked about the 2,000 paramedics that have been added. That, obviously, has a huge impact on the budget. To be honest, I don’t have an exact number or a percentage, but it’s a lot.

Eugene might have an answer.

Eugene Johnson: As of this fiscal year, I believe, the budgeted amount was $953 million. BCEHS is forecasting to…. Right now the forecast indicates that the likely final expenditure will be just over $1 billion. So if you compare that to when the Auditor General report was released, the annual budget at that time was $478 million.

Peter Milobar (Chair): I think I got the answer from one of your answers. I think it was to Kiel. I just want to confirm.

The 300 communities…. Those obviously aren’t municipalities. So it would be an unincorporated area, like Blue River, that has a volunteer fire department as a first responder. When you get to the 300 communities, it’s all of those added together, correct?

Yeah, okay.

Then, just one other, I guess, little plug, since we’re kind of on top, but kind of not all of us, with this. But talking about the rural access…. Before the riding boundary changes happened before the last election, I used to represent Blue River, Clearwater, Barriere — you know, a lot of smaller towns — as well as Kamloops. Now I’m just solely Kamloops.

Kamloops — and I’m assuming it would be this way with Prince George and other kind of hub nodes of population surrounded by a lot of rural — becomes a bit of an orbit for, a pole for, the ambulance service in terms of when cars get dispatched into Kamloops for the hospital from Chase or Clearwater.

They can get pulled into the service area of Kamloops very quickly and not go back out for the better part of a day, where that smaller town suddenly has technically got a fully staffed ambulance for the day, but it’s been pulled into the service area closer to Kamloops.

I say all that just as a preamble. Those are also all the same areas that have constant emergency room closures. The default is that everyone gets sent to Kamloops, whether it be at Lillooet, be it Merritt, be it Clearwater.

[9:10 a.m.]

I suggested this a few years ago, and I’m just throwing this out, more as a suggestion. A lot of times the health authority doesn’t inform BCEHS that the ER is closing, so we’ve had situations where ambulances pull up to a closed ER and then have to turn around and go straight back to Kamloops.

But the bigger piece of it is, and the suggestion would be, that the Ambulance Service, rightly or wrongly, suddenly becomes the point of health care access for emergent situations in those areas because the emergency room is closed. I’m not putting this at the feet of B.C. Ambulance. I want to be clear about that.

But as a kind of a stopgap measure, I guess, it would be nice if there was a way to kick in a protocol where there were extra ambulances brought on shift or to supplement so that, if nothing else, there’s a back-and-forth, and they’re passing on the highway. That town with the lone ambulance that has to bring that patient into Kamloops because the ER is closed now is not only without an emergency room, but they’re without ambulance service.

If there was a back-filling protocol that would kick in, looking forward, I think that would go a long ways, too, to making sure there was still emergent support and help in those smaller communities at those times that ERs are closing. The frequency of ER closures is fairly consistent.

There are lots of factors to it. Sometimes it’s a nurse; sometimes it’s a doctor. I’m not getting into that side of it today. But it is a reality smaller communities are facing on a fairly regular basis.

I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to maybe say it directly to Health and the Ambulance Service that there are ways I think we need to start looking at filling that gap and figuring out the cause of the closure later. In the here and the now, that doesn’t help someone that needs that emergent health care access help. It’s not a perfect solution, by any means, but I think it would help communities that are experiencing that loss of service.

Even if they get released immediately…. By the time you pick someone up, drive an hour or an hour and a half to get them to the hospital in Kamloops, if you got released immediately — which would be rare to happen that fast, in terms of even unloading the patient — you’re almost three hours out of that community, best-case scenario.

That’s a pretty big gap, potentially, in fairly large rural communities on the rural community scale. They have a lot of industry around them and things like that, where they no longer have an ER or ambulance service access. I just leave that as a commentary more than expecting an answer or anything, but I thought I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw that plug in there.

Any other questions?

Dana Lajeunesse: That reminds me of…. Port Renfrew is in my riding, and a few weeks back I met with the paaʔčiidʔatx̣ People. They have serious concerns about just that. They have one ambulance, and they have a road that is similar to a roller coaster, only not as smooth. So for a person with a broken leg or something like that that has to be transported to Victoria, it’s like a three-hour trip to get to Victoria.

I don’t really have a question, but it’s just that when that ambulance is gone, it’s gone for the day. There’s a lot of tourism and people hiking in back country and that sort of thing. It seems like a disaster that’s just waiting to happen there.

Yeah, not a question but just something that we need to look at. I think having another ambulance available to go and cover when the local ambulance is out of the area would be a really useful thing.

Ian Rongve: Yeah, we can certainly, with EHS, look at those issues and see how they fit with our staffing model. As Paul said, it’s data. It’s demand. Absolutely those issues that you’re raising, both of you, are important. Paul wrote it down, so we’re good.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Great. Well, thank you very much for coming in on relatively short notice to turn around and get us the update. We do appreciate it and appreciate your indulgence on us kind of wandering around a bit too.

I mean, it impacts all of our communities, so it’s a service that’s near and dear to a lot of people’s hearts.

With that, we will take a short couple minutes’ recess as we switch out for our next presenters.

The committee recessed from 9:15 a.m. to 9:23 a.m.

[Peter Milobar in the chair.]

Peter Milobar (Chair): We will pick up the meeting again. Our next report is a follow-up on the status of the implementation of recommendations of the Office of the Auditor General report, Management of Forest Service Roads, 2020. I’ll assume, the same as last time, that we’ll just jump straight over to the ministry to do their presentation, and then we’ll jump into questions.

Management of Forest Service Roads

Makenzie Leine: Thank you, everybody, and good morning. I’m Makenzie Leine, Deputy Minister of Forests. I’m joined by Assistant Deputy Minister of provincial operations, Jessica Coster; the engineering branch falls into her division. Jessica will be following my introduction with the details of the recommendations that we received from the audit.

I really appreciate the interest of this committee in tracking how our progress is on this audit, and the role of the Office of the Auditor General in supporting our continuous improvement, as well as everybody involved within the ministry and supporting us as a ministry and responding in this work.

In 2020, we received an audit report on our management of our forest service roads. We received nine recommendations. We’ve completed six of those, and we still have three remaining, two of which are intertwined — Jessica is going to provide some detail on that in her part of the presentation — and we’re expecting to complete the remaining three in the calendar year 2026.

[9:25 a.m.]

The audit and the subsequent implementation of the recommendations have really resulted in the continuous improvement that we strive for in the Ministry of Forests and the overall management of our provincial forest service roads.

We received a very valuable third-party review from the Office of the Auditor General, and it resulted in a system that provides greater transparency around road administration, timely road and bridge inspections, critical for the environment as well as the safety of our roads, consistent road maintenance and a more effective ministry oversight of forest service roads and road-use permits.

Prior to this audit, our forest service road management was adequate, but we did have some shortcomings that could use improvement. We were underfunded to manage our forest service roads in accordance with its policies. Records of inspections and maintenance weren’t readily accessible, and in certain cases, districts were not consistent in how they were adhering to engineering and road bridge policies.

Our implementation has been somewhat slower than we expected, but that was because of thoughtful, cost-effective and durable solutions being put in place to respond to the audit recommendations. We’re ensuring that the ministry cost structures are in place for the long term and aren’t unnecessarily impacted in other areas, creating unintended consequences.

A part of the improvements were very deep and material systems development. The resourcing of that and the change management of that, in order for it to be a durable outcome, was a little bit slower than expected. It’s ongoing, and we’ll continue to improve. We’ve implemented two new systems that are very robust, and they take a significant amount of time to implement and then have the entire ministry adhering to new standards.

These issues that were identified on our forest service roads, we’re not alone in this. This can be systemic issues across the sector, and they affect the management of most resource roads. So there’s a good community of practice in the private sector, as well as the public sector, and engagement with professional associations, as well, that are looking at the overall sector and our place in that.

Overall, the feedback we’re receiving is that the Office of Auditor General is supportive of the work we’re doing, and they’re happy with the progress that we’ve made. As are we. It’s made our systems and our processes even better than they were before.

Jessica Coster is going to detail the recommendations and the work we’ve been doing to respond to that and exactly how that has improved our systems.

Jessica Coster: Great. Thank you.

Recommendation 1 was around developing and implementing policy, procedures and practices designed to ensure that information on FSRs, including those under a road-use permit, is complete, accurate and easily accessible.

As Makenzie mentioned, we do now have two systems in place. So we accepted that recommendation, and it’s being implemented through two systems that are in place to manage our FSRs. One is called the land resource manager. That includes all of the information that comes out of our inspection and maintenance reports, so that’s now available through the land resource manager. Then the resource road system, which is really a tenuring system, clarifies who has a role of responsibility over the roads.

Those systems are now both mandatory. Previously, the Auditor General noted that they weren’t mandatory. They have now been upgraded, and they are mandatory. Additional functionalities are being added to both systems in the spirit of continuous improvement, and that really speaks around building out our tracking, further tracking for our road inspections, where I’ll get to in the next recommendations.

Road responsibility and road information is now public through the B.C. geographic warehouse for transparency.

Recommendation 2 was to develop and implement a plan to inspect and maintain bridges and major culverts on FSRs in accordance with its policies. That recommendation was accepted, and it has been implemented. Our engineering program has always maintained a strong bridge inspection program, although previous policies did not fully reflect the operational realities. What that means is that district managers are functionally responsible for bridge management, but we needed to have policy changes to align to that in that operational structure, and those have been done.

We also have now systems that are more complete to better support bridge inspection. We had a corporate bridge system, but now it’s connected to that land and resource management system that I previously mentioned in recommendation 1.

[9:30 a.m.]

Recommendation 3 was around reviewing and reconciling the engineering manual and engineering program funding policy to provide consistent guidance for determining FSR inspection frequencies, scheduling maintenance work and closing and deactivating roads.

That recommendation was accepted, and it has been fully implemented. There was internal policy misalignment, and it was corrected. Now both the engineering manual and funding policy are updated, and the engineering manual is the authoritative source.

Recommendation 4. This was around reviewing existing or implementing new policy procedures and practices to enable natural resource districts to accurately and consistently track ministry inspections and maintenance on FSRs. This one is tied to No. 5. This recommendation was accepted, and it’s being implemented. Its targeted completion date is 2026.

As discussed, we now have the systems in place, but it’s around change management and ensuring that all of the districts are using them and that they’re fully functional. Now everybody is aware. We are training, and almost completely everybody’s using them. But there is still more work to be done to ensure that that is all being entered on a scheduled basis.

This relates to No. 5. This recommendation 5 was to assess whether the natural resource districts are inspecting FSRs, as required by policy, to take action to reconcile any gaps. As per four, we are working towards this and should have this completed by 2026. We are also developing further pieces to our systems which will make them automated. Some of the internal checks will be automated, which will be significantly less labour-intensive and will ensure we have all the information that is required.

Recommendation 6 is to take action to reconcile the discrepancy between policy requirements for maintaining FSRs and the extent of maintenance that actually occurs, given resource allocation. I think Makenzie spoke about this. Since the OAG report, we have seen more resources directed to our FSRs.

We’ve received two significant Treasury Board uplifts to our budget, both in our capital and operating funding, since the report was published, which has been fantastic because they’ve significantly improved our program’s ability to manage the FSR network and also provided the much-needed funds to support these system upgrades that are invaluable as we move forward.

Recommendation 7 and 8 both relate to B.C. Timber Sales. No. 7 is to develop and implement policy, procedures and practices that enable business areas to accurately and consistently track inspections maintenance on forest service roads. BCTS is also using our two systems that are now in place. In addition to that, all business areas have completed and implemented their annual FSR plans.

Annual FSR plans contain mandatory tracking of inspections and maintenance of FSRs under B.C. Timber Sales controls. All business area plans have been reviewed so that one is completed.

With respect to recommendation 8, that is to assess whether BCTS is inspecting and maintaining BCTS FSRs as required by policy and take action to reconcile any gaps. This recommendation was accepted, it’s well underway, and it should also be complete in 2026.

As I stated before, all business areas have developed and implemented their annual FSR plans, and a review of those has been undertaken. There have been some deficiencies, and we’re currently addressing those so that it is fully implemented in 2026.

Recommendation 9 was to develop and implement an approach to support the effective oversight of FSRs under road use permits, including defining the roles and responsibilities of the natural resource districts, B.C. Timber Sales and the compliance and enforcement branch, and overseeing maintenance of the RUP holders.

That recommendation was accepted and has been fully implemented. It took a broad-based approach to complete the recommendations and where we clarified the roles and responsibilities of each party. That’s taken the form of clear letters to RUP holders around their inspection and maintenance requirements. As well, when BCTS issues their timber sale licences, they provide that information.

In summary, we have three recommendations that we are still working on implementing, and they should be implemented in 2026. We are well on track. We’ve made good progress, and all of the recommendations that we received from the OAG have been very valuable in increasing our ability to track and maintain our FSRs. As I said, it also allowed us to garner some additional funding to maintain our FSRs.

We appreciate the report, and we’re committed to finalizing the final three in 2026.

[9:35 a.m.]

Peter Milobar (Chair): Thank you very much.

Any questions?

I have one quick question, before we jump to Larry. You say you managed to obtain additional funding through government or through forest companies and others that are connected in with the FSRs as well.

Jessica Coster: They were Treasury Board uplifts.

Larry Neufeld: Thank you for the information. With respect to recommendation 6 and the bridge inspections, were there any injuries or any monetary damage to vehicles or equipment that would have prompted this to be a higher priority? I’m referring to bridge inspections.

Jessica Coster: That was not part of the Auditor General report. It was really around the inspection and maintenance and this schedule on which we undertook them and who was responsible for undertaking them. Again, in terms of our systems and tracking, that is being fully addressed.

Larry Neufeld: Fair enough. Thank you.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you very much for the presentation. These are very important recommendations to be implementing. The knowledge and inspection reports and the proper maintenance of our roads and bridges are critical for good decision-making on our resource roads, on bridges and on culverts.

There are a lot of user groups that are concerned that the ministry still is not making good decisions, in terms of pulling culverts out when they are perfectly fine. Same thing on bridges.

There are a lot of areas in the province — I think of the Incomappleux Valley in Revelstoke — where private land owners are cut off from their private properties. It’s the same in my riding. Near Mackenzie, the Parsnip West FSR, there’s been a lot of conflict over the state of roads and bridges and ministry decision-making in cutting off private land owner properties in that area. The work on getting that inventory right is absolutely critical for communicating with these user groups.

For rec site users — I think of the Upper Kitimat River — there’s a rec site that has been cut off, and folks in that area are very concerned about their ability to access the back country. It’s critical for economic development, obviously, for forestry companies, but it’s the prospectors and guide-outfitters who are using these resource roads as well.

I’m wondering if you are confident of the 2026 timeline for getting some of these maintenance and inspections…. Especially in recommendations 4 and 5, is the ministry confident that that ’26 timeline is going to be met?

Jessica Coster: I can speak to that. Yes, we are very confident, because we have the systems in place, right? It’s around ensuring that the proper training is in place and that staff are fully up to speed on what’s expected. That is well in hand. Yes, we’re very confident that we will hit the 2026 time.

Kiel Giddens: Maybe as a follow-up, for the B.C. Timber Sales recommendations, those are critical for BCTS to actually meet its AAC requirements as well, to have good data so that decisions can be made.

I’m wondering, first of all, how recommendations 7 and 8 align with any of the recommendations in the BCTS review that recently happened and if there are any synergies or things that need to happen a little bit more quickly because of that review or if that’s something that has been looked at by the ministry at all.

Jessica Coster: Yeah, the review is really around transforming BCTS. This is around the management of the data, exactly what you’d mentioned, to ensure we have all the information required to make the proper decision. They are intimately linked, in that they support the success and the performance of BCTS, but yes, this is around the data management, which is critically important as we move forward and make additional decisions.

Kiel Giddens: Just one follow-up. I guess the other thing is, in terms of transparency for the public, once all the plans are actually implemented, what does that look like for public transparency of the maintenance records and all of that? How does that factor into some of the plans? I think that would help to reduce some of the conflict if there are different views and opinions on the state of various roads and bridges.

[9:40 a.m.]

Jessica Coster: Absolutely. As I mentioned, as part of recommendation 1, road responsibility and road information are now publicly available through the B.C. geographic warehouse so that it can be accessed.

George Chow: When the public uses these forest service roads, does the government carry the same liability as when the public is using paved roadways in the cities or in rural areas? Is there any difference?

Jessica Coster: I’m not able to speak to that, specifically, because I don’t know the ins and outs of the Ministry of Transportation, what liability they carry. I mean, we do carry a liability, but they are maintained to different standards, so that would be the difference in terms of the details of the answer to that question.

George Chow: Okay. Thank you.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Did you want to add something else?

Makenzie Leine: Just to follow up on that as well. It is maintained to an industrial standard. So the expectation of any user on those roads is…. There’s going to have to be a level of care on the user’s part, understanding that it is a back-country road. It’s an industrial road. It also has industrial traffic, and it’s incumbent on us to ensure that it’s safe for access for other users, other than those industrial users.

Peter Milobar (Chair): In terms of the overall recommendations, and specifically on No. 6 there, has there been a change, then, on the evaluation, the ability to pivot the ranking of severity of what needs work done in any given year?

I say that in terms of being able to respond to areas, especially around culvert maintenance and things of that nature, when a big burn has gone through an area. You know, there’s a concern around the hydrology, runoff and things of that nature that will start to happen, which, obviously, can start plugging up those culverts pretty fast. That creates a whole other issue further down the hill.

Have any of these recommendations led to more…? I guess, is there that nimbleness of the plan? You’re obviously not going to get to every single culvert every single year, so you would have a kind of work flow. But how flexible is that work flow when big events start to happen, to have other areas maybe leapfrog for priority of review or maintenance?

Jessica Coster: Yeah, roads are allocated risk ratings, right? So they’re inspected to see whether or not they could be subject to both safety and environmental risk if there is a large weather event.

Based on that risk rating, it actually determines the schedule of inspection and maintenance. So if it’s at a higher risk after any event, it will be checked and inspected, versus if it’s not as high risk, it’s annually. So that is built into the system.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Would a large fire be considered a large event, as well, or is it just rains and heavy snow and that type of event?

Jessica Coster: I think anything that could impact the prism of the road, where we need to go out and check, if it has a high-risk rating, yes.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Mable Elmore: Thank you for your presentation.

I don’t have quite the experience in terms of the use of forest service roads in Vancouver. But during the last couple of years, with the big fire situation we had, I was up, actually, in the Peace area. I was returning to Vancouver and got rerouted off of Highway 5 onto a forest road to circumnavigate the fire. So I appreciated the forest service road there in terms of utilizing that.

I’m more familiar with forest service roads across the province in more my tree-planting days as a student. But, yeah, that’s going back.

My question is with respect to, just in terms of…. If you can just explain the big picture with respect to the makeup in the forest service roads, roads that timber companies themselves are responsible for, and kind of that — just what does that look like?

[9:45 a.m.]

I guess there are different categories with respect to forest service roads across British Columbia, but just a picture around that would be helpful.

Makenzie Leine: Jessica, maybe you can jump into the detail.

Overall, for forestry-related roads, we have forest service roads that are maintained by the Ministry of Forests. We have forest service roads that are under a road use permit that are maintained by another party outside of the forest service. Then we have road permit roads, which are generally your smaller network that comes off of the forest service roads that are under permit and are under the responsibility of the licensees in the area that are operating.

Jessica Coster: That’s absolutely correct. The forest service roads are under the province, but if they have a road use permit over them from an industrial user, then the maintenance inspection is done by that industrial user. The road permit roads are not part of the FSRs. They are maintained by the licensees.

Mable Elmore: But they’re still required in terms of the inspection requirement. They’re still covered under that. That is the whole network of forest service roads.

Makenzie Leine: Oftentimes road permit roads have a limited lifespan, and they will be deactivated, to varying degrees, once operational or industrial activity is finished. So the standards for inspections and the revisiting of that will change over time and always with the assurance that they’re left in a safe and environmentally sound fashion when they’re finished with those roads.

Forest service roads, generally, are much more permanent in nature. Some are capital, and often the road permit roads are more short-term in nature.

Mable Elmore: The jurisdiction is all provincial under Ministry of Forests?

Makenzie Leine: That’s correct.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Any other questions?

Kiel Giddens: Just one more on the recommendation 8, just a clarification. The ministry’s response says “provincial operations conducted a review of LRM records in June 2024 and March 2025.” Is that just an acronym referring to the quality assurance reports?

Jessica Coster: Can you say that acronym again? Oh, the Land and Resource Management System. That’s one of the two systems that we have in place to track. The LRM is maintenance and inspection information.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you for that. Now, that analysis work — it sounds like it was completed or expected to be completed in September of this year. Was that complete? Are there any overall kinds of trends in the findings of that that will lead into the action plan, I guess? It sounds like that’s the long-term part of implementing that recommendation.

Jessica Coster: Thank you for the question around the BCTSP. Yes, that does relate to the plans. I mentioned that the BCTS now has plans for their roads, and that relates to using this information in terms of the gaps and how to move forward. Right now we’re looking to ensure that those don’t have any deficiencies. But yes, that information was used in order to put together the plans for the roads.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Okay. Well, I think we’re done. Thank you very much.

As someone who uses forest service roads a lot for hunting and fishing in and around Kamloops, they are a very vital part of everyone’s daily lives, especially in rural areas. I do appreciate it.

For anyone thinking that government bureaucracy and politicians are very inefficient all the time, I would like to point out that we’re well ahead of schedule, and we will have a bit of a break until 10:20 now, instead of just a five-minute break. Our next presenters won’t be ready till about then.

The committee recessed from 9:49 a.m. to 10:22 a.m.

[Peter Milobar in the chair.]

Peter Milobar (Chair): Welcome back, everyone. We will pick up where we left off.

Our next report is the follow-up on the status of implementation of recommendations in the Office of the Auditor General report, Mental Health and Substance Use Services for Indigenous People in B.C. Correctional Centres, from 2023.

With that, I will turn it over to our presenters.

We do have electronic versions of your presentation, and then we’ll jump into questions once you’re done.

Mental Health and Substance Use
Services for Indigenous People in
B.C. Correctional Centres

Penny Ballem: Thank you very much, Chair, and thanks so much for the opportunity to come and speak to this report. I’m first going to pass it to our vice-president. I’m Penny Ballem. I’m the interim chief executive officer and president of the Provincial Health Services Authority.

I have with me our vice-president, Susan Wannamaker, who has overall responsibility for corrections health, and, on my left, Jennifer Duff, who is our executive director on the Forensic Hospital and its related ambulatory programs and corrections health. We’re very privileged to be here today and hope that we’re able to provide you with a good response to this really important report and very critical issue.

I’m just going to ask Susan to do a quick land acknowledgement on behalf of us.

Susan Wannamaker: Good morning, everyone. As Penny said, it’s a real pleasure to be here today.

As we’re speaking about the care and service that we provide to Indigenous Peoples in corrections centres across the ten centres in the province, we really wanted to ground ourselves in a land acknowledgement this morning and recognize that we’re speaking to you today from the lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking nations, the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. We’re really very grateful for the opportunity for us to live, work and play on these lands.

I’ll turn it back to Penny.

[10:25 a.m.]

Penny Ballem: Just acknowledging that the work that this program does in corrections involves the whole province. A key metric that really triggered the work of the Auditor General and our work together is the fact that provincial corrections serves about 9,700 individuals a year who are admitted to one of the ten corrections centres around the province.

Over a third of those individuals are Indigenous, and in our northern centre in Prince George, actually 62 percent are Indigenous. Overall, of the population that is admitted to corrections, 75 percent have mental health and/or substance use disorder. This is a very, very vulnerable population.

In 2017, responsibility for the health of individuals in correctional centres was transferred to PHSA. Prior to that, health services had been organized and overseen by the PSSG. It was really served — and I remember this from my days working in government in the early 2000s — by a large number of individuals and some small group contracted physicians and nurses. So it was a very difficult service to sort of build coherence and define overall goals for.

There was a lot of turnover at the time. I can remember hearing about real concerns where one provider or another decided they didn’t want to do the work anymore, and then there were gaps in care.

It is a really important area — very vulnerable individuals — and that has become worse with the advent of the toxic drug crisis. Many of these folks come in having used street drugs and are at significant risk of withdrawal and some very serious medical outcomes related to that, including death.

I just feel very happy, and I can’t take any credit for this. I’ve only been at the PHSA since April, but I can tell you that having spent time with this program and with Susan,s we have made real progress over the last eight years. There are some very hard metrics that show that not only have we improved the health of a large percentage of the individuals in corrections, but also, in regard to just even basic mortality rates, we have significantly reduced them.

There is a lot more work to do. I think the report of the Auditor General in 2023 brought up the issue of: what specific and unique way are we approaching Indigenous inmates? How are we ensuring that we’re really recognizing the complexity of their situation, why they are in corrections, their health issues and the complexity of the impact of colonialism?

It really, basically, stimulated us to just go another big step to actually do things specifically for them, to improve their well-being and anticipate their needs in a better way than we were already trying to do. PHSA has — as do all the health authorities — a very, very strong commitment to reconciliation, to cultural safety, to anti-Indigenous racism.

Back in 2017 when this transferred, I think the awareness of that was still in its early days in terms of how it was impacting people in our health care system. So a lot of work has been done, and I’m not going to go on any further, but I did want to provide a context that we take this area of our organization extremely seriously.

I would say that, from our perspective, it is underfunded still, and we are moving resources around to the greatest extent possible to strengthen our ability to care for the complex individuals both in the forensic system and in the corrections system. It’s a real area of priority for us, and it’s very difficult work.

I really just want to take the opportunity to thank the leaders of the programs and also the many physicians, nurses and other individuals who work to support this work. It’s not easy, and it’s devolved around the province. To keep it on a high-quality track is a lot of work and really important.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here, and I’ll turn it over to Susan.

Susan Wannamaker: Thanks, Penny. I appreciate that you’re not showing the slides up today, so I’ll just speak to the slides and call out the slides as we go through them.

Penny has given a really good overview of the service that we provide at corrections health. As she notes, we have done a significant amount of work since the audit was completed and presented to public accounts in 2023. We’ll get into that detail in a bit.

[10:30 a.m.]

You’ll see that there were four recommendations that we’re really focused on improving: our assessments, including our care and service, as well as our release and discharge planning and our supervisory reviews.

The outcome, where we’re at to date, with the four recommendations is that they are intended to complete, mainly due to some technical issues, related to the current electronic medical record that we have in place in corrections. That is a legacy system that we inherited with the transfer of the program in 2017. It was built as a one-off and is managed by a third party. Its architecture and infrastructure are very limited with what we can do. Our challenge is that much of the work that we can do needs to be manual.

Also, we are very limited in what we can do with aggregate reports. The audit showed the opportunity with aggregated reports to really ensure that we are reviewing and making changes in our performance.

The other component, I will say, picking up on what Penny said, is that we really do believe that this audit has been a catalyst to positive change across our corrections centres. It is with full intent for us to continue to do this work, and we are committed to that. As we’re seeing, any improvements that we’re making in the care and service of our Indigenous clients is actually transforming the care for the other clients in corrections. That’s really important as we think about the advances that we’re making.

The other important thing to note is that, in 2017, as the program came over before we went through the events of COVID, the clinical service plan that was used as the template for the audit really reflected what we knew about corrections health at the time. Over the last eight years we’ve come to understand the opportunities but also the limitations of providing health care in correctional centres, and we are taking the opportunity now to update that clinical service plan. That will be completed in September of the coming year.

I would also like to point out that we are really working on a best-practices model that was identified by the World Health Organization as part of this work. We are one of four provinces where Health is actually delivering care in correction centres, considered to be really a leading practice in delivering this work.

I’ll now take you to slide 3. I want to get into some detail of some of the work that we’ve done over the last couple of years since we reported to Public Accounts. We’ll start with the first two recommendations. This was really the opportunity for us to develop reports that allow us to take a look at our performance, and then use those reports on a regular basis.

In corrections health services, just like in other health delivery systems, we use screening and assessment tools to enable our service. Two key tools that we use are the jail screening assessment tool and the initial health assessment report.

As a result of the audit, we have moved, within the limitations of our system, to create reports so that we can track our performance. We’ve provided, in the deck, our year-to-date performance, which would be April 2025 to October. You can see that we are completing, within 48 hours, 98.7 percent of the jail screening assessment tool, as well as 96.5 percent of the initial health assessment. We also are tracking this related to our non-Indigenous clients, and our performance mirrors that.

The other tool that we created in 2024 is — I think this speaks to the impact that we’re seeing across our corrections centres related to the toxic drug crisis — the implementation of the national early warning score tool. This really helps us manage, monitor and track vital signs, as well as withdrawal assessment.

More and more we’re seeing the impact of polysubstance use in our corrections centres, and that does signify a real need for medical intervention. This will be something that we will continue to create reports on to look at our trending and support for that as we move forward.

[10:35 a.m.]

A big piece of the work we did was developing self-identification for Indigenous Peoples in corrections. Obviously, to do this work, we need to understand the population that we’re serving.

With that, we created a guideline in 2023 that also identified a number of fields that we are now pulling data — much of it, unfortunately, manually — for us to track not only the completion rate of asking the questions related to self-identification but also how our Indigenous clients are actually using the services that are provided with them. We are seeing increases both in assessments being done and in the uptake on services being provided.

One of the things that was very important about the work and that is important in all of our delivery of health care is to really focus on discharge. With the EMR, we were able to create a discharge form and have it automated within the system, and that was completed in February of 2024. This is very important because we work with a number of partners as we look to support release planning and integration into community.

We work with our regional health authorities, we work with the First Nations Health Authority, and we also work with B.C. Corrections and probation officers. It’s very much a team that focuses on, as well as we can do, that transition and that attachment to services in community that helps to support public safety.

We have begun to pull information and data, again manually, from this discharge form to really inform our performance and seeing where we have opportunities for improvement in connection with our partners in discharge planning.

In fiscal years 2022 and 2023, we saw the implementation of our community transition teams. This was an investment by the Ministry of Health to really support that active transition into care in community. These teams, which are made up of four members, including peer support, nurses, Indigenous liaison workers and a social worker, are really focused on supporting all of our clients, including our Indigenous clients, in community and ensuring that they’re followed up for a period of time to really, again, support that engagement.

We’re seeing that this is making a difference in both the attachment and the connection, and our continued work on this will be hoping to focus on how we can decrease recidivism of folks coming back into corrections over time.

One of the things I do want to highlight for the committee is that in many of our centres, there’s a high volume of turnover. A good example of that is North Fraser Pretrial, which is a facility in the Fraser Valley area. It has upwards of 300 cells. We have 210 intakes a month and 190 discharges, just at that site alone, so there is a lot of work related to discharge planning and focus for this population.

The other piece of work that we’ve created is an updated client health plan, which was implemented in June of this year. This is a plan that we want to see initiated within 48 hours of the client being part of our care. We’re really seeing good uptake within the first months of this. Certainly, we’ve seen that within 48 hours, 81 percent of our clients who self-identify as Indigenous are actually getting that plan initiated within that 48 hours.

Also related to the reports, we created a number of dashboards and monthly reports that are reviewed by our leadership and by the leadership overall for correctional health services, as well as our leaders at each of the centres.

[10:40 a.m.]

This is looking at information related to discharge plans, tracking and ensuring our accountability related to this work, looking at client health plans and services that are being provided downstream to these clients. Again, it’s a dashboard that’s really helping us pay attention to this on a regular basis.

As I’ve said, I think one of our challenges is our electronic health record. Despite its limitations, we are moving on the intent to do this work. Under Dr. Ballem’s leadership, we are actively involved in looking at the requirements for a new electronic record in corrections health, and that’s something that we hope to have identified a solution in, in the next couple of months for us to be able to move on this. That will really help in the delivery of our service and our care.

Turning on to slide 4 now. This will speak to the work that we’ve done related to the final two recommendations. One was to ensure staff document a rationale when they cannot meet operational requirements and then ensure supervision and sign-off by supervisors at the centres.

Before we get into some of this, I did want to speak a bit to, really, the workflow and how we work in partnership with B.C. Corrections as to the journey of clients through corrections. What’s really changed over the last few years is we’ve seen a shift in the percentage of remand clients versus sentence clients. Now 75 percent of the clients we see are under remand, which means they have received a charge. They’ve been remanded into custody and are waiting to go back for a further court appearance.

The result of that is these individuals are staying in the correction centres a much shorter period of time. It creates, and I gave you the example of North Fraser Pretrial…. You can see that there is that rapid turnover. We also know that we have a high percentage in our centres, upwards of 51 percent, that actually go to court and don’t return. Many times that’s without our knowledge.

For us to actually complete some of the forms in that time…. Not being aware of the trajectory then creates the record as incomplete. We have, as part of that, created drop-down boxes in our forms so we can go back to actually identify why the forms have not been finalized so that we can keep track of that. That’s been a provision we’ve been able to put in place with the electronic record.

I think the other piece that we’ve put in place to really support us — and again, it’s manual — is a quality assurance approach with two audits. One is a manual review of our nursing documentation, and then the other is a manual review of our client health plan. We are actually using our staff to do that work on a regular basis because we think it is important for us to understand and ensure the documentation is complete, and as a registered nurse, that’s a requirement as part of your licensure. So it’s important that we actually do this work.

I will also highlight there are other limitations at times that prevent us from completing our work in a timely manner because we are restricted by the movement of clients, for safety, in corrections, depending on what’s happening and also given B.C. Corrections staffing levels.

As an example, in our Surrey Pretrial unit, where we have created designated mental health beds, just since April of this year, it requires three guards for us to enter the room. So we at times are limited based on the staffing in corrections.

Finally, just in summary, I do want to highlight again the positive catalyst that this review has been for us in our work. We still have work to do. I did want to call out Laura Pierce and her team because we’ve really seen a collaborative approach and connection to this work and understanding, I think, of some of the challenges and limitations of working in corrections facilities. So I think it’s really focusing us on work we need to do to improve our service.

[10:45 a.m.]

We are committed to do this work and carry on and go beyond the recommendations of the review. That includes continuing our work on educating our staff and our journey with our action plans to eradicate Indigenous-specific racism. We’ve set up an OAG quality improvement committee to really focus and target this work, and we have great buy-in by our leaders and our staff.

Other work that we continue to do is really mapping our journey at intake as well as discharge. The more we understand all the critical steps in that, the more we can actually make sure that we’re meeting the needs of the clients and also managing if there are any gaps in that.

I think the other piece I’ve talked about is the electronic health record. We’re continuing to create that as a priority.

In closing, really just wanted to highlight our great appreciation for this audit and the work that’s happened since. I now will pass it back to the committee, and our team is here for any questions.

Kiel Giddens: Thank you very much for the presentation.

Obviously, it’s a very sensitive area you’re working in. Appreciate the work.

Noting I’m from Prince George, thank you to Dr. Ballem for highlighting the high number, unfortunately, of Indigenous inmates in Prince George corrections.

We do want to be sensitive, and it is difficult to go through some of these processes to make sure self-identified Indigenous clients are being looked after and managed. These new tools and assessments, I think, are an important step in that, but I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.

You’ve referenced the jail screening assessment tool and the initial health assessment. I’m assuming that these would inform the client health plan when that is created. How does that information properly get translated, and why are there two different assessment tools? Why can’t they be all done in one frame so that it properly translates? I feel like that added complexity may be, you know, a risk in there.

Susan Wannamaker: Maybe I’ll start and pass it over to Jen for some of the detail.

It’s not uncommon for us in the delivery of health that we use a number of assessment tools as we’re looking at individuals, to create a real focused connection to their health needs. As we look at our clients, they may also not only have mental health and substance use needs, but they also have physical needs. So, very much, the work that happens from these tools gets translated into the client health plan.

Penny Ballem: Yeah, just one point on that as well, that if you’re using a standardized tool that is accepted nationally, internationally, you also are able to benchmark your comparisons of the results on that standardized tool with the impact you’re having. So when you do bring them together, you basically create a new tool that…. You’re not able to just compare it.

These things are, as Susan says, very common in health care, and it does allow us to actually get a bit of a reality check of how we’re doing against other jurisdictions, other provinces, even amongst our individual corrections centres.

I’ll pass it over to you now, Jen.

Jennifer Duff: Yeah, just to build on Penny’s comments, the JSAT is, actually, adopted internationally, and it’s used in multiple jurisdictions.

To speak to the member’s question specifically, the assessments are really done in parallel to one another. They’re done at the same time. The JSAT is done, and the intake assessment is done in the same interaction, and it’s all held within the same overall record.

One of the important things is just about the workflow. I wanted to point out about our care plan and the client health plan. We built that for it to be updated as the client goes through their journey.

[10:50 a.m.]

So if you can imagine a client entering, going through the intake process and declining health care, declining treatment for their substance use, as an example, we can’t force treatment in this particular case. Two days later that same client may say, “Well, actually, I would like treatment,” and we can open up and start integrating and populating that client health plan. Then that also populates the discharge plan, which we would work on.

All of these things, they’re considered to be quite fluid in terms of the intake is done, the screening is done upon intake, but the client health plan and the discharge plan are a contiguous process through the client’s journey in the correctional institution.

Larry Neufeld: Thank you to the folks that are undertaking this. I can’t imagine the most pleasant of work, but incredibly important work.

I did jot down a note here at the beginning of the presentation, and as I’m reading it, I realize that perhaps it could have been more complete. I do recall a reference to proprietary software and that being a challenge with respect to moving information over or what have you.

If you could just refresh my memory as to what that proprietary software is used for and why we continue going down a road of proprietary software as opposed to using something commercial that may or may not be used in other jurisdictions.

Susan Wannamaker: Maybe I’ll start. I think that the original record was created a number of years ago under the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. I can’t comment what their process was, what vendor they used, but it’s purpose-built. The vendor then has the knowledge of that software and that record, and we end up having to go to that specific vendor to do the work, which is the limitation, and it also is increased cost for us.

I think our approach on moving forward with a new record is looking at a record that is maybe more available for us to actually integrate into our suite of records across PHSA but also the rest of the health system.

Any time that you’re trying to target and just have a one-of, it creates a lot of challenges downstream. But at this point in time, we have not had the funding, honestly, to move forward on something else. Under Dr. Ballem’s leadership, we’re looking to create that opportunity, because it has been a limitation for us.

Larry Neufeld: I certainly do appreciate that answer.

I guess just a reassurance to the committee. Is the information available, or does the vendor have some type of proprietary control over it? When you do have the opportunity to explore the new system, that information can be taken and moved?

Yes? Okay.

Susan Wannamaker: I don’t think there’s any issue with us once we look at a new record. If you’re talking about moving that information over from one system to another, that would be part of the work that we would do.

I don’t think it’s a difficulty in actually connecting with the vendor. I think because it’s aged infrastructure and architecture, we have to manage how we actually do the changes in the record over time because it is such an old product.

Penny Ballem: If I may, Mr. Chair, just the integrations are one of our big challenges. In terms of health digital records it’s: how do they connect with each other?

The older a record is…. This, I think, was probably built on that there was a product that got enhanced and configured specifically. It’s really…. It’s way more difficult than it should be, to be honest, but it is.

What we’re trying to do now is find a solution that is practical that we could put in play quickly that won’t be so costly. We have basic platform systems in the PHSA, but they were never designed for a corrections facility. So we’re trying to find something that is close enough but at least can be connected so we can pass information in an appropriate way around and do, basically, the rolled-up assessments without having to do it manually.

We’re trying to get, you know, a Volkswagen or a little Toyota Tercel that’ll get us there.

[10:55 a.m.]

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): I want to start by thanking all of you for this work. Your care and compassion are on display in a time where you’re…. This is the embodiment of an inconvenient truth of the history of colonialism, probably the most difficult part of it, in a time where we are facing an uprising in denialism.

So I really appreciate your work, and I appreciate the work of the people all the way throughout the system, including folks who are doing this work on the ground. I just want to express my gratitude for your compassion in the way you’ve presented to us and the way you are dealing with this issue.

So my wonder is…. It might just be that I’m not reading the slides properly. Always looking at that evidence-based background, I think it’s really important to celebrate the wins. You see things like an 86 percent completion rate for the ISI and 96.5 percent for the IHA, all these new acronyms.

It’s those 3.5 percent and the 19 percent. These are really good numbers, but is there work happening…? I think you might, between slides 3 and 4, talk about this: when something is not completed, the rationale for it. But what’s the work that happens to look at why that 3.5 percent or why that 19 percent, to make sure that those folks are also captured as you move forward?

Susan Wannamaker: I think that’s a great question, and I think that’s what drives us in the work. You look at where the successes are, but it’s the other piece of the work that’s not being complete that we have to dig into. I honestly can say that that is the work of Jen and the teams on the ground, is looking at that and where we have the gaps and what we can do to improve that.

Some of the work that we’re undertaking now to really do some of that quality mapping on intake and discharge is helping us to understand where there can be gaps in care. We are also not in corrections 24-7 in many of our sites. So we have a limitation of staffing at times and availability of that.

As Dr. Ballam said, we’re working to see that we can make the investments that we need in this service to meet the needs, not only of our Indigenous clients but the clients overall. The gaps I think that we’re seeing in our Indigenous clients are also similar to what we’re seeing in the general population.

It is work that we are digging into to truly understand. We’re celebrating these successes, but at the same time, we still have gaps and we still have work to do, and that is top of mind.

Lesley Ballam: Maybe, if I could, Chair.

I think for me, what I see from — because I get to have a bit of a bird’s-eye view on this. I see the relationship with our corrections partners on the ground and on the site with wardens and then with ministry staff are really shifting and changing and really growing stronger. I think there’s a growing recognition that the overall impact on the health of all the inmates is actually significantly shifting. We actually have some research evidence that has recently been published that really shows that.

As they become more aware of how important this is, my hope is that some of the difficulty of the provincial corrections, where it’s a short time and the large remand centres where people turn over so quickly and we don’t even know, that there are going to be ways…. If you think about that there are electronic ways, we may be able to communicate that quickly so that at least we know somebody has been released who we were only kind of halfway across the river with.

Then our job is to connect it up with our community partners in the health authorities to see if we can capture that moment, to see if we can land that individual a bit more safely in terms of their ongoing health needs. That’s something that I’ve seen as somebody who’s worked in the Downtown Eastside and in the Vancouver area, where it’s a really great example.

People go into corrections, they may get some treatment, but they come out in the middle of a day or a night where there’s no one out there to receive them. That, to me, is one of the biggest challenges that we have. I think that there are some real opportunities, and we’re on that journey to sort of start looking at those.

I think the other thing is that we have corrections come to our senior team that has responsibility for all kinds of things, cancer and children’s health. I would say it’s fair to say that corrections isn’t always high on the radar in health care.

[11:00 a.m.]

But when you come and you talk about these things to other senior leaders in an organization the size of PHSA, it does make a difference. Around there, they’re like: “Oh, we didn’t know. We didn’t understand. What can we do to help?” I think that’s also what I’ve seen, that there’s really been more enabling support from different portfolios, and previously, it was just a program that nobody knew much about.

To your point, Member, it’s so critically important, and we do really care. You know, there’s lots more I think we can do. It does take a bit of time, but the relationships are growing. They’re, in essence, what really makes the difference, because when you go with a problem, the door is open.

I just really want to thank our colleagues, not just in the Ministry of Health — I’ve got ADM Sturtevant here — but also in PSSG, who are really starting to realize this is making a difference for them, for their corrections officials on the ground. I think that creates enthusiasm and more creative ideas on how we can continue to improve.

Peter Milobar (Chair): I guess, following up on that, it ties into what I was going to ask as well, I think. There’s a lot of tracking, it seems, as I read this, around the intakes, discharge plans, all of that. But is there any tracking…?

I mean, for any type of recovery program or treatment programs, there are people that…. I don’t want to call it success or failure rates, but there are people that relapse in kind of a given rate that that’s going to happen at. Then hopefully people get back into another program when they do have a relapse and things of that nature.

Is there any type of data or tracking or benchmarking? The best-intentioned program in the world, if it’s really only helping that person for the few months or the year that they’re in a corrections facility, and then they immediately relapse when they go back out and get released to the general population….

It may look, on the corrections side of the equation, like a great success of a program. On the broader health impact and quality of life for that individual, it was almost a stopgap of stopping time, but it didn’t have any continuing continuity and success rate compared to any other program.

Has there been tracking, or is there going to be tracking, to see if this is on par with what you would expect with the general population seeking treatment and recovery and help? Is it exceeding those? Is it lower than those?

I think if we’re not truly tracking the overall success and failure of this, there are lots of well-meaning programs out there that do or don’t actually ultimately really move the barometer into a good direction on a wide range of issues. But since we’re talking about this here, I’ll kind of leave it at that, and then I’ll follow up with a second question.

Susan Wannamaker: I think you’re really talking about outcomes of our care and the impact that it’s made. Certainly, one of the things — and through our team — is also doing research.

Most recently, we’ve actually just had research published to show the impact of the service on overdose deaths in community and decreasing that, because we actually knew that there’s a strong predominance, within the first week and, certainly, within the first month of discharge, of a higher incidence of overdose with clients leaving corrections.

So we’re starting to see an impact there. Over the course of the first number of years, we’ve actually seen a drastic decline in overdose deaths in community as a result of discharges.

Our day-to-day impact of that — I think there is work for us to do within the service to really track the clinical outcomes, and that’s work that we’ve got planned to do.

I don’t know, Jen, if there’s anything else you want to add.

Jennifer Duff: Thanks, Susan.

Just add to Susan’s comments. Susan referenced the community transition teams. We actively have over 500 clients, and the role of those teams is to transition the clients from corrections to a regional health authority.

[11:05 a.m.]

There’s also a court-mandated, ordered by the judge, ReVOII program, which is a repeat violent offenders program, and that’s a mandatory program. So we’ve done some evaluation in partnership with B.C. Corrections. I’m happy to share that data. I could follow up with the committee at a later date.

To Susan’s point and Penny’s point, I think there’s always more we can do. If you think of clients who are in a correctional centre, “held in remand” is just 54 days on average. It’s a short period of time but a long period of time. So we end up doing a lot of stabilization, access to primary care. Then what’s important, exactly, is that connection to a regional health authority for ongoing treatment.

The other thing I wanted to reference is that we’re doing some mapping. If you think about the complexity of a client walking through the criminal justice system multiple times in their life — being incarcerated, bouncing back to a regional health authority, repeat offending, potentially overdosing, frequent visits to an emergency department and then back to an incarcerated setting — it’s very complex.

Under ADM Sturtevant’s leadership, also in partnership with PSSG, we’re mapping what that journey of that client is so we can look and pull out some of those opportunities to improve the trajectory.

We’ve also been speaking with our research partners — particularly Dr. Amanda Slaunwhite, who published the study that Dr. Ballem and Susan referenced — around recidivism, which is very high. We know that the literature and the data directly correlate substance use with repeat offending.

So I think, through updating our clinical service plan, we have much work to do around addressing substance use in-centre, connecting people with community to carry out that longitudinal treatment journey. I think we’re having that conversation, and we’re doing the work. To Penny’s point, it’s incremental change, and it’s going to take us some time to get there in a good way.

Kiel Giddens: You made a comment that kind of stuck out about going on beyond the recommendations of the review and, I think, obviously, referenced the importance of the discharge plans and all of that. But one of the things with discharge plans is really the connection from that to support outside of the corrections system as well.

Electronic health records are critical, but they have to be translated, of course, to outside, from one system into Northern Health and all the various health authorities. The other area that it needs to be connected to are all of the support agencies.

I’ll use Prince George as an example because it’s where I’m from. I see the corrections…. As folks are discharged, they often…. I hear from Prince George Native Friendship Centre, the Schizophrenia Society or the Brain Injured Group, all of these groups. They don’t always feel like they know any information about the client, so they’re starting from scratch as well. They have to do that initial intake without any ability for that information to be translated, and people fall through the cracks that way.

So I’m wondering how that discharge plan translates to the community and to the health authorities and to various groups that need the information for that discharge to actually be successful. Otherwise, folks can easily…. It’s happening in Prince George. They will end up back on the street without the support that they need.

Susan Wannamaker: With regard to discharge planning, we have to do that in partnership and not wait, to your point, until the client has left. Discharge planning should start at the same time as we’re actually doing the initial health assessment and the client health plan.

So we start to actually document the services that the client receives and then start thinking downstream, what that looks like, because it is a connection to community services. It’s a connection to Community Living B.C. We’re actively engaged with that agency as well, as housing can become a challenge.

We do create partnership tables to look at specific needs of clients. Does it meet all of the opportunities? I think there is a gap there that we need to continue to work on because, depending on the health authorities, there are different levels of services available.

[11:10 a.m.]

We’re actively working with Northern Health on some work related to mental health and substance use and supporting them, thinking about what those community services look like to support the downstream not only from corrections but from mental health and substance use care in beds.

We’re doing that work, but it’s challenging because the resources across the province are different, health authority by health authority. But we do create integrated tables and approaches to this work, and we can get better at it, for sure, to make sure that we’re not telegraphing or dropping things on agencies without their knowledge. It’s work we need to do.

Jennifer Duff: If I may add to Susan’s remark. We just had a conversation about four weeks ago with the assertive community treatment team — just to give you a tangible example — in Prince George about exactly what you’re referencing, Member, about how we create that continuum.

To Penny’s point, back in 2017 when we assumed the service, I think people didn’t know a lot about correctional health, and for a long time it’s sort of been over here. I think the conversation that we’re having now with the respective health authorities is that we’re very much part of the continuum.

In fact, the clients that Vancouver Coastal, as an example, or the Northern Health Authority, as an example, are treating in community related to mental health and substance use are exactly the same clients that we’re treating in provincial correctional centres. I think we’ve sort of been the missing piece of the puzzle, if I may, and I think we’re having those conversations.

The other point I wanted to reference about the work and beyond is really the work around us as settlers to these lands, our knowledge about Indigenous People and Indigenous ways of knowing and being — really, a leadership journey. Our executive leadership team, our senior leadership team, across the service have all embarked upon a two-year journey, as has the executive leadership at all of PHSA.

We have a mandatory training requirement for all clinicians, nurses, doctors, health care workers and pharmacists to complete what we call San’yas training. It’s hard to create an anti-racist environment unless we’ve been educated to be anti-racist. So we’ve really spent a lot of time and energy on ensuring that there’s a minimum level of education for all of the staff.

Not stopping there, we have continuous sessions, like lunch and learns, around anti-racism, about understanding privilege, and we have really tried to integrate that into our daily work.

So just if it adds to the response.

Peter Milobar (Chair): We have Dana and then Mable, and then unfortunately, we will probably have to wrap it up because we do have other reports we have to get into to keep somewhat on schedule.

Dana Lajeunesse: Kiel kind of took my question there. But it was more, I think…. While folks are incarcerated, they have the services available, and they’re essentially housed. But when they’re released and they go back onto the street, I mean, it’s inevitable that they’re going to fall back into previous habits. So I think the biggest challenge there is providing them with housing and continued support.

Not a question, but just an observation.

Dr. Penny Ballem: Just very quickly. We have a huge advantage, really, in our system in Canada in that we can actually track people — certainly, across the health care system. If you think about the EMR that we’re talking about, we will have information about their journey in corrections.

I think that’s the strength of our research community. We really need to understand: how do you identify these people? Long before they end up in corrections, get at them there. If they do end up, you know…. How do we create a system that puts them as a priority to make that connection when they’re released so that they land safely and then we can get them back on track?

It’s not easy to do. There are so many organizations that help. But we actually have this sort of advantage of being able to look at that in our data, on a pretty real-time basis nowadays, and figure out what the triggers are that will allow us to know they need to be connected over here.

Then the trick is: how do you make that happen? I don’t know. I’ve been 50 years at it. We haven’t got to nirvana yet, but it’s a really important thing, and we have way better tools nowadays to actually do that.

[11:15 a.m.]

Mable Elmore: Thanks for your work — incredibly challenging and difficult and inspiring, in terms of your approach.

My question is with respect to 2017. It was PHSA that took over the health aspects. How was it being administered and delivered previously?

Susan Wannamaker: In the most recent past, before 2017, there were three different contractors, if you will, that provided services to the ten different correctional centres. There was no standardization. Prior to that, there were upwards of 54 different contractors that were providing the services.

We’ve been able, with the transfer to Health, to really look at a standardized, evidence-based approach to care, whereas before, there were multiple providers with multiple contracts providing it.

Mable Elmore: Who were these providers? Who were the health providers?

Susan Wannamaker: They would have been doctors and nurses, but under private contracts with PSSG. It was under PSSG, not Health.

Mable Elmore: Oh, I see. Got it.

So there were ten provincial correction facilities. The forensics presumably care…. These are folks who are, I understand, unfit to stand trial or not criminally responsible. I presume the forensic facilities are also integrated into those facilities, or are they separate?

Susan Wannamaker: The work is connected, but the forensics, both in the hospital as well as our seven clinics across the province, are under the forensic services act and the Forensic Commission.

We do support mental health and substance use care in corrections, through what’s called a temporary absence. When someone is deteriorating to the point that they actually need to be seen with higher-level care, they are then transported to forensics, because those are the only two areas in the province where we can provide that level of secure care.

As you know, we are working in partnership with the Ministry of Health, Dr. Daniel Vigo and PSSG on Surrey Pretrial. It’s where we now have designated mental health beds within corrections. We’ve been piloting that since April, with an opportunity so that we can look to actually provide that higher-level care in corrections rather than requiring a transfer to forensics.

Mable Elmore: That’s kind of real-time integration into the system. With 97 individuals into provincial corrections annually, do you have the approximate number in the forensic system?

Susan Wannamaker: Our admissions, Jen, for forensics?

Jennifer Duff: There’s not a rapid turnover in the forensic system of care. It’s a 190-bed facility. Today there are 194 patients in those 190 beds, pretty regularly. Then the ebb and flow of patients in and out of that system is under the B.C. review board. They control admission and discharging and privileging to the community. Then, as Susan referenced, the only other access to the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital is through a temporary absence.

Just to complement what Susan was saying, in the new Surrey mental health facility, there are ten beds designated in Surrey Pretrial Services Centre. Prior to that, in April, there was no other secure facility in the province. Clients in corrections who had deteriorated from a mental state would be transferred to the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital for care and treatment, stabilized and then transferred back to corrections.

Now we have the ability to use the Surrey Pretrial beds to stabilize individuals and then return them to the general population. They’re very separate systems, but to Susan’s point, they do work in collaboration — different mandates, but very important to the system.

Mable Elmore: Is it correct that the provincial corrections facilities house folks who have less than two years, and that it’s the federal that has more than…? What’s the integration between the provincial and federal corrections facilities with respect to the provision of health care?

[11:20 a.m.]

Susan Wannamaker: There is no integration. Their system is different than the provincial system. While the sentencing is two years less one day to be in provincial, our average length of stay in provincial correctional facilities is 76 days for sentenced people. There is, very much, a rapid turnover not only for the remand but for the sentenced individuals as well.

Mable Elmore: I have more questions, but I know we’re tight for time. I just want to say thank you. Really, your professionalism, with the challenges to integrate the system and providing support and services, is appreciated. Thank you.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Well, thank you for updating us on the progress that has been made. We’ll keep an eye out with interest to see how it continues to evolve.

We’ll take a quick recess, a couple of minutes, just so that we can switch out presenters again.

The committee recessed from 11:20 a.m. to 11:28 a.m.

[Peter Milobar in the chair.]

Oversight of Contracted Services
for Children and Youth in Care

Peter Milobar (Chair): We have the consideration of correspondence related to the status of the implementation of recommendations in the Office of the Auditor General’s report, Oversight of Contracted Services for Children and Youth in Care, 2019.

They’re not here to present, which is why we have a written response. I’m going to suggest we have a discussion around it. We may actually have to rely a little bit more heavily on the Auditor General’s office this time, potentially, for some insights into how we’re interpreting what has been written and sent to us as well, if that’s all right.

I recognize you can’t speak on their behalf, but maybe speak to any discussions you’ve had with them as well.

With that, anyone want to kick things off?

George Chow: Maybe the Auditor General’s office could enlighten me. With the vacancy tolerance that is being talked about on slide 1, recommendation 1….

[11:30 a.m.]

Peter Milobar (Chair): George, we’re on the recommendations outlined for contracted residential services for youth in care. Is that what you’re referring to?

George Chow: Yeah, that’s right.

Sheila Dodds: Thank you for the question. I can see that it’s part of the recommendation 1, where it says we’re wanting the ministry to come up with a strategy. One of the things is “(d) a determination of an appropriate level of vacancy tolerance in the system.”

I think that’s the question, Member.

George Chow: Yes. What would be an appropriate level of vacancy tolerance in the system? What is the vacancy that is being referred to?

Sheila Dodds: This is when you have a space for a child or youth in care. They contract for beds that are needed, under contracted residential services, in a residential facility for youth or children. If you have full capacity and you have an immediate need to be able to place a child or youth, you can’t do it.

This was wanting them to look, as they’re coming up with a strategy, to figure out what would be…. You don’t want to be paying for beds that aren’t being used, but you can’t be at that maximum capacity, because you need to have that ability to place people when there’s an urgent need to place a child or youth.

It’s just as part of the strategy to think about what the best balance is for them and what that optimal vacancy level would be that would provide for the flexibility but not have a bunch of vacant beds.

George Chow: Okay. Thanks. It’s like spare capacity then.

Peter Milobar (Chair): One question came to mind on recommendation 4. The other ones that aren’t completed but are in progress, the other recommendations that they intend to complete, actually have a date. They have, “Remains on track for 2026,” things like that, like, say, recommendation 3.

Recommendation 4, same thing: “Status not complete. Intend to complete.” But they don’t really have a deliverable date that they’re intending to hit.

In conversation with them, is there any insight into what their thought process was as to timeline for that particular recommendation when you were checking back with them? Is it just open-ended, where they intend to do it but have no idea when it will happen?

Sheila Dodds: Well, as part of the annual follow-up report, if you look at page 25 of our report, it does provide an anticipated completion date — as of March 31, when we were doing the follow-up work — that has December 31 for provincewide implementation of the four service types.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Thanks. I didn’t cross-reference the two reports. Thanks for that.

Any other discussion or questions, concerns?

I guess we could have had a slightly longer session with the previous group, then, after all.

We’ll move on to the next agenda item, which is discussing the follow-up process.

Follow-up Process

Peter Milobar (Chair): As members may recall, at the October 22 meeting, the OAG noted that it would like to adjust from a ten-year follow-up scope for follow-up for four years. We’ll maybe deal with that now, as we’re a bit ahead of schedule.

Any discussion on that? Any further thoughts that people may have had?

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): I’m reminding myself — because there’s a lot of reading this week, and this goes back — that part of the issue was that with ten years, the volume of follow-up was not necessarily something that was realistic. We were also trying to figure out a way to make it valuable with the right amount of time but also realistic in terms of follow-up for the committee, correct?

Peter Milobar (Chair): That is correct.

[11:35 a.m.]

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): I think one of the stumbling blocks was: if we made the timeline too short, do we run into a situation where people just kind of roll it out — like, do they try? — even though I don’t think that’s the intention.

We threw around the idea of a hybrid model where, at a certain point, whether we decided it was four years or five years, we could say: “But we’d like to continue this particular one.” As I’ve thought about it since then, that’s something that helps us overcome the possibility, or the risk, that people know that they may be asked to continue on and also allows them to keep the volume of work and follow-up within a reasonable scope.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Yes, that was, I believe, to just clear four years or a kind of hybrid.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Four plus.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Four years with a bit of flexibility.

Mable Elmore: Thank you for that recap and also for refreshing me with our discussions. That sounds reasonable to me.

Kiel Giddens: I recall that it was, obviously, the Auditor General’s office that brought this forward. Had there been any thoughts since we had those deliberations, as your office went back to have any discussions, on the workability of a solution like that?

Sheila Dodds: Thank you for the question.

We did have some discussion recognizing that it makes sense if you’re looking at eight years post an audit report, as to the relevance of a recommendation. Systems may have changed or ministries reorganized. We’re sort of looking at trying to make sure it’s as relevant as possible.

If you did think that four years of reports made sense, then that would mean dropping the 2019 and 2020 reports, but the idea was that there might be a couple of recommendations that you’d really want to be able to have those regular updates for. You’d say: “Those would drop off except for report A and report J, because we’d like those to continue.”

I think, in our discussion, it made a lot of sense to us. It finds that balance between what’s important to committee members and just the practicality of it as well.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Are there any members that would like to see something different than that kind of approach? Does that approach seem to make the most sense?

It does to me, because it seems to free up the efficiency piece but also keeps that oversight piece in play as well.

I’m not sure. I’ll look for guidance from the Clerk as to whether we have to do an official motion.

Karan Riarh (Committee Clerk): No, it seems members have consensus on that approach. I would just suggest that perhaps members want to take a look at the reports from 2019 and 2020 to see if there are any that you would like the Auditor General to continue to monitor, and perhaps a motion about those reports would be good.

Peter Milobar (Chair): The ’19 and ’20 — from our previous meeting, the only ones that we actually asked to look at were the Oversight of Contracted Residential Services for Children and Youth in Care, and we just dealt with that report right before this; Access to Emergency Health Services; and in 2020, Management of Forest Service Roads, which we’ve also dealt with today as well.

There were five other ones from 2019 and three from 2020 that we previously had already said we didn’t need to get follow-ups on.

Is there any desire for any of the 2019 or 2020 reports to still be continued to be brought forward to the committee?

Kiel Giddens: Given that we’ve had some presentations today, but ensuring that that final follow-up happens, it might be prudent to just keep those three on the list for now and then have everything else fall off.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Okay. Is there any…? George, do you have any concerns about leaving the three on or removing everything from ’19 and ’20? Mable?

Mable Elmore: Which three?

Peter Milobar (Chair): The three we’ve heard from or will hear from today — Access to Emergency Health Services; Oversight of Contracted Residential Services for Children and Youth in Care; and Management of Forest Service Roads.

Now, that doesn’t mean they automatically would come back here for presentation. It just means that we’d be asking the Auditor General to do one final follow-up with them to make sure that their actionable items that they’ve said they’re going to action are 100 percent completed.

Any others?

[11:40 a.m.]

George Chow: Yeah. I’m fine with that.

Laura Hatt: One of the things that I think we probably could discuss as well is that we usually calculate the rate for the number of years. So we say they’re 60 percent completed over the period of time. I think it would make sense if we’re dropping most of them and only bringing a few forward that we would still calculate the rate on the four years where we’re doing the majority of the work. I just wanted to clarify that before we went forward. That seems to be the most commonsense way of doing it.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Yeah. I don’t think that’s…. I mean, it’s, frankly, probably, more for your own tracking and quick reference. Again, I think we’re also hopefully trying to be mindful as a group here that our membership changes quite regularly. So we need to find something that, moving forward, would make sense for new people coming in and not overwhelm them with, you know….

That’s why I support dropping the vast majority of these, because otherwise you could have a whole new makeup, by even next meeting. Who knows? Suddenly everything in 2019 by that new committee wants to be reviewed, right? So the more consistency, I think, we find with this and the logical paring down is probably better for everybody’s sake moving forward.

Do you have a motion?

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): I move that the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts request that the Office of the Auditor General of British Columbia continue to follow up on the status of audit recommendations in the following reports for an additional year: Access to Emergency Health Services, 2019; Oversight of Contracted Residential Services for Children and Youth in Care, 2019; Management of Forest Service Roads, 2020.

Motion approved.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Hopefully that’s a clear direction for you. We’ve pared it down quite significantly for you over the last two years.

Sheila Dodds: Just to confirm, on a go-forward basis, we will do four years. So the next annual follow-up report will have reports from 2021, 2022, 2023 and ’24, plus the follow-up on the three that you’ve just requested for one additional year. Then the year after, we will drop 2021 and add 2025, but you can choose to keep any from 2021 on the list.

Peter Milobar (Chair): That’s correct. Yeah.

I mean, compared to where we were when I first started on this committee, and they had just actually made some of the changes right before I came on, we’ve pared down pretty significantly. But I think we’re finding that sweet spot of being able to get you a workable review schedule but also keeping that bit of oversight and accountability for those that maybe are or maybe aren’t slow-walking recommendations so they know that they can’t just automatically slow-walk things and be left alone again to their own operation.

Anything else before we break for lunch then? We are one minute ahead of schedule still. Look at that. The day of efficiency continues. We’ll take a break until one o’clock.

The committee recessed from 11:43 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

[Peter Milobar in the chair.]

Peter Milobar (Chair): Welcome back, everyone. We will pick up where we left off. Now we have consideration of the Office of the Auditor General report, Ministry of Agriculture and Food: Reliability of Premises Identification Information, 2025. With that, I will turn it over to the Auditor General.

Consideration of
Auditor General Reports

Ministry of Agriculture and Food:
Reliability of Premises
Identification Information

Sheila Dodds: Good afternoon, Members.

Our independent audit report Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Reliability of Premises Identification Information was tabled on November 6. The report was led by a large and strong team.

I want to thank Suzanne Smith, director of performance audit, who is with me today; Janice Dowson, manager of performance audit, who also is at the table. On my left is Laura Hatt, assistant Auditor General, with performance audit. Other team members included Ruwa Mgodi, a manager; Julianne King, a senior auditor who’s in the gallery; Daniela Pinto; Marta Kleiman; and Pam Hamilton, our director of data analytics.

That’s the team. There were a couple of babies that were born, which is why we had a large team — a couple of babies in the process.

Just before Suzanne provides an overview of the audit, I’ll explain why we chose to look at the premises ID program. In recent years, B.C. has experienced numerous wildfires, floods and animal disease events threatening poultry and livestock. The premises ID program supports emergency responders and animal health officials during such emergencies.

It collects key information from farm owners, operators and producer groups about the location of poultry and livestock in the province. It then shares this information with emergency responders and animal health officials. The information can help identify where premises with animals are located, the types and number of animals on the site, and contact information for the owner or operator.

Since 2022, the premises ID registration has been mandatory, but not all premises with poultry and livestock are currently registered. Our audit focused on whether the ministry had implemented the premises ID program in a way that ensured reliable information was provided to animal health officials and emergency responders.

With that overview, I’ll turn it over to Suzanne and ask her to summarize what we found, our conclusion and our recommendations.

Suzanne Smith: Good afternoon, Chair and committee members.

Thank you for your interest in our audit of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, tabled on November 6, 2025. As Sheila noted, our audit looked at the ministry’s implementation of the premises identification program to provide reliable information to those responsible for protecting poultry and livestock from animal disease and other emergencies.

The audit period was from July 1, 2022, to February 28, 2025. The start of the audit period aligns with the date when premises identification registration became mandatory.

To reach our conclusion, we looked at whether the ministry had increased registration in the program to close the gap between the number of premises that are registered and the total number of premises that should be registered, implemented processes to ensure information was accurate and up to date, and provided staff with guidance about how to share information according to legal requirements.

Overall, we concluded that the ministry had not implemented the premises identification program in a way that provided reliable information to those responsible for protecting poultry and livestock from animal disease and other emergencies. We found that the ministry lacked the information needed to identify the gap between the current number of registrants and the total number of premises that should be registered.

We also found that the ministry couldn’t implement targeted outreach to increase registration in the program, because it had not adequately identified which owners and operators to prioritize. In addition, we found that the ministry lacked adequate processes to ensure that information was accurate and up to date.

Finally, we found the ministry lacked adequate guidance for staff about sharing information. We made seven recommendations focused on increasing program registration, addressing data reliability and improving guidance to staff about sharing information. The ministry accepted all seven recommendations.

I will now pass it back to the acting Auditor General.

Sheila Dodds: Thank you, Suzanne.

That completes our presentation. I just wanted to extend, on behalf of the audit team, our appreciation to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food for their work with us on this audit. That concludes our remarks, Chair.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Just before we go to the ministry team, anything from the comptroller general on this one?

Okay, we’ll turn it over to the ministry team for your presentation, and then we’ll open it up to questions after.

[1:05 p.m.]

Michelle Koski: Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair and members of the committee. I’m Michelle Koski, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the Office of the Auditor General’s report on the premises identification program and to outline how the Ministry of Agriculture and Food is responding.

This audit provided a number of recommendations, which we have accepted, on how the premises ID program can be improved to ensure we have reliable information that will help people protect poultry and livestock during disease events and other emergencies such as wildfires and floods.

We recognize that the premises ID program is not perfect, but it has been a useful registry for the past few years during real emergencies and provided material benefits during wildfires and avian influenza. We are committed to continue to work closely with different industry associations and local governments to increase registration and ensure we have accurate information for those already registered.

We will use the OAG report to implement change, and it has been very useful to have an external opinion on how we can improve the premises ID program to make it more reliable, transparent and effective for protecting animal health, public safety and food security in British Columbia.

I will now turn it over to Paul Squires, assistant deputy minister of programs and services, sector resilience division, who will walk you through our presentation.

Paul Squires: Thanks very much, Michelle, and good afternoon to everyone. I’ll just kind of run through about ten slides I’ve got here, one per recommendation and then some overall comments. I understand the slides are not up on the screen, so I’ll just speak to which slide I’m on, and I’ll go to slide 2 now.

As the deputy minister has said, the ministry accepts all seven recommendations, and we will execute them in a phased and pragmatic way that will focus on enhancing program reliability and emergency readiness. Priorities for the ministry over the next 18 to 24 months will involve improving data integrity, information-sharing, targeted registration, system modernization, communication and partnerships.

I will flag that back in February of 2024, due to staff turnover and other things, we only had one staff member working on premises ID. That team is now up to four, so a manager plus three team members. We have also struck up what we call the western premises ID alliance, which is essentially a community of practice between us, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and we are constantly learning from our other neighbouring jurisdictions on similar problems we have and things of that nature.

Now we’ll go into the recommendations. Next slide.

The first one is for the ministry to use additional sources of information to develop an estimate of the number and types of owners and operators who aren’t registered in the premises ID program. That’s a really hard thing to do. It sounds simple. How many farms are there in B.C., and have you got all of them? It’s a heck of a lot harder to answer than you would ever imagine. So we accept this recommendation gladly. We’re glad you’ve highlighted it.

We will start a new method in the new year that will combine multiple data sources to estimate and track unregistered agricultural sites. A pilot will start in spring of 2026, and we will update annually to try and maintain accuracy.

The multiple data sources thing is a real problem. B.C. Assessment is one example, where I’d love to have their information about farms, and I can’t get it. But we’ll do our best and work in progress, and we will attempt our best to implement that by winter of 2026. It’s a top priority.

The second recommendation from the Auditor General is for the ministry to develop and implement a plan to increase registration among owners and operators identified as priorities. The plan should include roles and responsibilities, activities and timelines. Of course, we’ve accepted that one as well.

We will create a data-driven outreach plan starting in summer of next year, with annual reviews, and we will partner with municipalities and regional districts. We’ll monitor quarterly how the registrations are going. Then we will have to keep in mind….

In the emergency world, obviously as emergencies come up — whether it be wildfire, avian flu, hopefully no floods or droughts or anything else — the same staff that work on this are also actively responding to emergencies. So the time to do this is in the slow seasons of emergencies, but if there are a series of disasters, it’ll probably slow us down a little bit.

This one’s also just going to be a challenge because we know that there are some people who will never want to be registered in a government database. They won’t trust government with their information. Even though in this circumstance, it’s being used to prevent the spread of disease or to keep livestock safe during wildfires, there’s always going to be a segment of B.C. agriculture that won’t want to do this.

[1:10 p.m.]

That said, by and large, we find commercial agriculture is absolutely bought into this. Farming is their career. It’s something they’ve often done for multiple generations. So the commercial side of agriculture is probably where we’ll focus most of our energy. Then for the sort of lifestyle hobby farmers, we’ll increase efforts there as well. But I think it’s important we be realistic that perfection here is probably going to be really difficult.

The third recommendation is for the ministry to ensure that the registration process collects all enrolment information required by the premises ID regulation. We’ve accepted that recommendation as well, and we will make some system updates that are targeted for completion in spring of 2027.

We use the same software provider and IT provider, Fujitsu, that many other jurisdictions do as well, and there will be communications and training plans put in place. We’ll make improvements with clear guidance, validation and missing-data reports, and we will, hopefully, target 2027 for when this is complete.

One of the risks here relates to partial records from legacy, so having to go back to registrants and ask that they update things. We can ask, but it doesn’t mean everyone’s going to listen. But we’ll make best efforts and hope to report progress when we come back next.

The fourth recommendation is to implement processes for staff to resolve errors in the premises ID database at regular intervals and keep a record of this work. This is an area where, obviously, having four team members instead of one is going to be very beneficial. We plan to improve data quality through automated reporting and dashboards. Those will be new dashboards.

Same as I highlighted before, a real challenge here is just going to be the frequency of emergencies that we have to deal with. In years where there are very few, we’ll probably make really good progress. But we hope to implement this as soon as possible, and we’re targeting winter of 2026 for this one, using as much automation as we possibly can with manual follow-ups only where necessary.

The next recommendation, No. 5, is for the ministry to refine its process for updating and/or confirming information provided by owners and operators, to follow up on accounts with no valid email address and respond to instances where account holders haven’t replied to the ministry request for updating and confirming their information.

This one is a real challenge. There are some farmers and livestock owners who understand the value of being in the premises ID database, and they just won’t submit their email address. They want government to have the information; they don’t want government to communicate back with them.

We will work to create a brand-new standard operating procedure. We will, every two years, look to confirm with automated notices for producers, and if email isn’t working, we’ll look to reach out to them through phone, email and other methods to try and make sure that their information is up to date. That’s all I’ll say on that one.

Recommendation No. 6 is for the ministry to work with producer organizations to ensure they can provide complete, accurate and up-to-date information as required by the regulation and information-sharing agreements. So this mostly focuses on the supply-managed commercial side of agriculture in B.C.

The recommendation is accepted there, and we plan to update our MOU templates and conduct annual review cycles starting in summer of next year. We will require annual data submissions from the various associations and implement monitoring and feedback to maintain compliance and align with national standards where possible.

What’s important to note here is that the method that works for one association might be different than how it works for another association, based on animal type or just the way that they run their association. So we’ll have to be a little bit flexible, but the target there is to have that completed by fall of 2026.

The final recommendation, which relates to information-sharing, is for the ministry to implement guidance for ministry staff that includes information on the appropriate access, use and disclosure of premises ID information according to the Animal Health Act and the premises ID regulation.

This is really useful for local governments. We have found there’s more interest from governments in recent years in terms of getting premises ID information, not just during a wildfire response but in advance of wildfire season to try and, hopefully, do some mitigation activities. It’s really beneficial for us to formalize our processes, not just for staff in the ministry but also in ministries like Emergency Management and Climate Readiness.

Of course we’ve accepted the recommendation. We will finalize the policies and guidance in spring of 2026 and do a rollout with annual training for staff. We will publish procedures, checklists and job aids internally and deliver orientation and refresher training as need be. That’s all I’ll say on that one.

[1:15 p.m.]

On to the summary slide here. We’ve accepted all the recommendations. The priority focuses will be data integrity, information-sharing, targeted registration, system modernization, communication and partnerships. We’ll report progress annually and, of course, come back to the committee as need be — just with the proviso that emergency events will affect timelines. Hopefully, we don’t have as many emergencies in the coming years as we have had in the past few years.

I just want to thank the staff at the Auditor General as well. It really was beneficial to have an external set of eyes on the premises ID system. I’m happy to take any questions you have.

Larry Neufeld: Thank you, everyone, and thanks for the presentations. I do want to thank the Auditor General’s group for this.

When I read through this document and I see 20 percent non-confirmation, 36 percent inaccurate or incomplete information, it does beg the question, in my mind: is this program effective at all? I understand the rationale behind it, and I do believe that this is important. So I think it has been a fantastic opportunity to highlight some really key opportunities for improvement here.

That being said, I do have two questions. What was just presented…. I’ll preface my questions with a confirmation of what was just previously said. Having grown up with an agricultural background — I was raised on a farm in Saskatchewan; I live on a farm now — absolutely, I can appreciate why farmers don’t want to give their contact information. I’m also an elected official, and even my own supporters won’t give me their email addresses, in many cases. So I can appreciate the uphill battle.

That being said, this, to me, is a program of…. I wouldn’t say it’s of critical importance, but if it’s not critical, it’s half a step down from that. This is very important. We do have to figure that out, but I do appreciate the challenges involved.

The first question that I would have is: given the large discrepancy around the amount of information that’s required versus what’s provided, what timelines are we willing to commit to that we can come back to and revisit to ensure that we have this program where we need it to be?

Michelle Koski: Well, I can take a stab at that. It is a top priority, and I’m going to say, Paul, that I’m thinking about a year. I think we could make some real progress in a year. A lot of this is exactly what you said: it’s about trust.

The outreach is quite intensive. This isn’t emails. This is getting people into a room. It’s outreach with our agrologists. It’s working with the associations. It is time-consuming, for sure, but it’s really all about trust. I think that within a year we could make some pretty significant progress. We’ll never get to 100 percent, we acknowledge, but I think we’ve put far more resources onto it than have been, and I think that will make a big difference.

I actually completely agree with you. I would say it is a critical program. Given the environment we’re in with climate change and the challenges we’ve had with the droughts and the fires, it is absolutely critical.

But it is trust. It takes time, and it takes trust, to get out to these groups.

Larry Neufeld: Thank you for that.

That would lead me into my next question. That would be around: how does this program interact with the federal…? I’m thinking here in the situation of the ostriches that have made the news everywhere in the country. How does this program interact with the federal counterpart to ensure that something of this nature is handled properly in the future?

Michelle Koski: I’ll ask Jeremy to answer that. He works with the CFIA most closely.

Jeremy Oaten: We do share data with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. With regard to that specific case, they were made aware through independent reports about the case in Edgewood. But we do actively share information, because they are the lead responder for animal diseases in Canada that are federally reportable.

We actively share information from our database with them through information-sharing agreements.

Larry Neufeld: How often is that done? I guess my question would be: why didn’t this program identify it previously, before it was done independently? Does that make sense?

Jeremy Oaten: I think so. When I said they were identified independently, I meant that the disease event was identified independently. I think a neighbour or something identified the report.

[1:20 p.m.]

The premise itself was, I think, originally set up as a potential commercial operation. They were well known in the community.

In terms of active sharing of information, we upload certain information to the CFIA on a very routine basis.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Thank you for the work. Thank you for the response, for the program.

I have farm status on my property, and we are what I would call hobby farmers, not commercial, not independent. This report prompted me to read through my emails and see how many times there has been outreach to me by the federal, local or provincial government because of my farm status.

In the last 24 months, we’ve had seven requests for information between local, federal and provincial government. Some of them were quite arduous requests. There was a food security one from the feds that was hours of work. It made me think about the response rate that you, MLA Neufeld, commented on and understand it a lot. There is, for sure, a fatigue, and I’m just a hobby farmer.

It made me look at recommendation No. 1, and my question actually starts with the Auditor General. Does the recommendation, when you say number and types of owners and operators who aren’t registered, to estimate the number and types…. When you asked that question, what did you mean by numbers and types of owners?

Sheila Dodds: Thank you for the question.

What we’re looking at is…. It’s impossible to define the total population of farmers or of premises that should be registered according to the regulation. So when we’re talking numbers and types, it’s increasing the number of premises. Types would be: would it be hobby farms? Would it be certain types of animals? It was to look at data sources and bring some of the information together to build a better sense of what that broader population is so that you could identify where there would be gaps.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Could I just have a follow-up? If the committee just sort of allows me a little bit of grace here….

I think about the proliferation of backyard chickens. I think about the number of people who dip their toe into farming and then decide: “Actually, we’re not going to do it.” I wonder sometimes: what is the tipping point of implementing and accepting a recommendation that, in my opinion, has an expense associated with accepting it but is actually nearly impossible to implement?

At what point do we say: “You know what? This is based on the following factors in agriculture. We actually can’t implement this recommendation in a meaningful way that allows us to have the type of data that’s being asked for, because it’s just not available in the sector.” I worry that we might end up actually wasting some resources that could be better utilized towards other recommendations in the program.

I believe the program is important. I understand the need for the program. I’m actually quite impressed — it’s only been in place since 2022 — at the uptake of the program, knowing the industry. But I wonder if there’s not a tension sometimes between a recommendation and the ability to actually implement a recommendation.

I’m not sure who answers that, but it’s a tension.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Dealer’s choice. I see two hands.

Sheila Dodds: I think I’ll start, because that’s a very fair question. When we do recommendations, we do discuss with whatever organization that we’ve been auditing, because you want to make sure that the recommendation is going to be practical.

Part of the challenge here is that the program has been around longer than 2022, but a regulation made it mandatory to be registered. So what we were looking at: how do you comply with that piece of legislation, with that regulation?

In the report, it notes that according to the ministry, there’s knowledge that there are poultry and livestock farms that are not registered. So the intent of the recommendation was that you need to figure out a way to have a better sense of who’s not registered, because that information, you need it to be able to support those emergency responders to respond. That’s the whole purpose.

[1:25 p.m.]

There is always, with our audits, the choice of the entity to choose not to accept a recommendation. We work hard to make sure that they are practical. It’s not looking for 100 percent accuracy, but it’s looking for moving the needle on knowing that you’ve got a better sort of sign-up in terms of the regulation.

Michelle Koski: Yeah. I know exactly what you’re saying, and I agree with you. That’s why we were trying to caveat it with: “It will never be perfect. We’ll never get to 100 percent.”

The vast majority of farms in B.C. are very small, less than $10,000 a year. We know this. We’re very well aware of all of our challenges with our small farmers. We have strategies in place to say…. I mean, there are certain areas that are really important that we have it, right? Supply management, dense areas, places that are prone to extreme events — wildfire, floods. That’s obviously what we’re going to target.

We will never get everybody who has ten chickens and a couple of llamas, right? We just won’t, and that’s okay. But there’s absolutely work we can do to improve this. Part of it is this trust exercise.

There are other things we could also look at, too, that are more…. You know, if we want to go even further, cross-compliance. We have so many programs, right? If you want this program…. We do that a bit more on a sort of incentive side. Like if you’re applying for a new program, for example, we ask you to have a premise ID. We have some that are kind of more like our crop insurance. We don’t quite go there, but ones that are more grant-based, we’re already doing that.

You’re right, and I agree with you that we’re not going to be sending out thousands of civil servants to track down everyone with, you know, a couple of animals. That won’t happen. But we do have strategies to make sure that the ones that…. When people need help during an emergency and can’t move their animals, that’s the biggest problem by far.

George Chow: Thank you. The work you’re doing is very difficult work in terms of trying to identify all the premises. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to accomplish that. But I was interested in this comment that you were trying to go through B.C. Assessment and get some data there. Is it for privacy reasons that you wouldn’t be able to get certain kind of data from B.C. Assessment? The other database would be the municipal business licence, for example. Are you able to do something like that to identify potential premises?

Paul Squires: I’ll just start out…. I can’t speak to the municipal business licences, although we’ll definitely look into it. With B.C. Assessment, it relates to the structure of their legislation. Similar to us, they collect the information for one very specific purpose, and it can’t be used for anything other than that very specific purpose.

Just to speak to the recommendation, you know, it’s broad enough. It says to use additional sources of information to develop an estimate. So we’ll do our best. It’s not to focus on 100 percent compliance or anything of that nature but just knowing what the size of the population that we’re trying to get registered is. It’s kind of pull your socks up and think differently about how you might estimate that, and we will do that.

Peter Milobar (Chair): A question that kind of flows from what Stephanie was asking about as well. In my experience, and this isn’t exclusive to any one government jurisdiction or entity, when emails go out or requests for information go out, there seems to be a mindset sometimes of: “Well, if we’re interacting with these people anyways, let’s get as much and all information as humanly possible for every possible scenario or data set.”

Has there been any thought given to trying to scale back so that the requests and the registration and the understanding of what you’re asking people for doesn’t feel overly intrusive and doesn’t tap into the mindset of: “What is the government’s business on X, Y and Z?” It seems if the highest and biggest priority — and it’s been said multiple times now that perfection is never going to be achieved — is actually about making sure, especially large animals…. Understanding of those implications for a fire event or things like that….

I’ve been chair of a regional district for multiple years with multiple fires where that is a very real problem, trying to coordinate and organize. You know, frankly, the chickens and things like that become very secondary.

[1:30 p.m.]

Is there not a way to try to encourage more registration and cooperation if it’s the bare minimum data set that you truly need to accomplish the stated goal versus making it feel like the person filling it out is not only providing the information for the stated goal but for a whole bunch of other information?

I guess I’ll just close with this part of it. The mindset, again, with water registrations and everything else…. There’s an underlying fear that all this other data gets collated together, and suddenly the government is coming knocking and telling me I’ve got to turn my taps off in the middle of a drought, even though it’s not even connected to what you’re asking.

It either gets misconstrued or feels like that because of the sheer volume of questioning and work that has to go into replying to what should have been just an initial request around trying to figure out how many large animals you have, how many small animals you have, and let’s get you registered so that we can actually make easy contact in the midst of an emergency or a bioemergency.

Just to maybe get a sense of: is there a streamlining, through this process moving forward, that’s going to occur, or is it…?

Michelle Koski: Yeah, for sure. If they only knew the state of our ability to share and collect information. I sometimes go: “Don’t worry. It’s not that sophisticated.” But yes, I hear you. Definitely, that is a concern.

When we send out our emails about this, we’re not going: “Oh, and do this survey,” right? It’s just premises ID. But I take your point. I know there’s a huge tendency to do that. “Let’s gather more information, or get this” — or, you know, some ambitious student has a study they want to do, that kind of thing. Yeah, I agree.

Paul, do you have anything specific about how the emails will be more targeted?

Paul Squires: Well, what I would just say…. What’s the better way? I’m looking at the regulation here. What is the information we ask for section 5? In my opinion, it’s actually pretty brief, so I don’t think we’re asking for too much.

What comes to mind is what the province is just now focused on in the Ministry of Citizens’ Services, which is called Connected Services B.C., this being the general vision by 2028. Then by 2030, government has invested significantly in one entry into government, via technology, right?

That could be extended further: how are we now communicating with people who are registered in government across all our various different databases? You could do further work at that point to streamline the way you’re communicating with people, writ large, whether that be our program or someone else’s program.

I take your point. Right now, it’s just us asking them about this thing. If they’re getting seven emails a month or whatever it is, it is onerous, and we can improve there.

Peter Milobar (Chair): It was seven in two years. She wanted to correct that.

Paul Squires: Okay, good.

Peter Milobar (Chair): It might have just felt like seven in a month.

Other questions?

Kiel Giddens: We were talking quite a bit about the form of outreach and what that looks like. Obviously, I can picture it with the commercial side as well. In associations and large operations — you know, B.C. Dairy — it would be very beneficial.

I think at the local level, I’m interested to hear if farmers institutes factor in and if that is a major part of outreach. I feel like they could also be a bit of a general conduit for information. Maybe they could even play a greater role overall in the program, if possible. Just curious if that’s part of the discussions right now.

Jeremy Oaten: Yeah, that’s an area we’re looking at increasing our outreach into — the farmers institutes. We haven’t done that historically, that I’m aware of. That is an area we’re going to be exploring to see if there are some opportunities for further outreach that way.

As it stands right now, we do work directly with a lot of regional districts in trying to increase registration at any opportunity that comes up. Definitely, working directly with those types of organizations will be beneficial as well.

Paul Squires: If I can add one extra piece. The Deputy Minister talked about cross-compliance in terms of ministry programs. If you want ministry money for a grant, you’ve got to be registered in premises ID. There are a decent number of cross-compliance areas already, but it can improve — anything related to ear tags and traceability, apiary licensing, meat inspection programs, getting medication for livestock, re-entry permits during disasters, lab requisitions and some municipal bylaws.

I think the other way we can handle this is: any of these essential services you might need to access, if you’re a livestock owner, require a premises ID across the board. We’ve got some already, and we can probably do even more as well.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Anything else from anyone? No? Okay.

Well, thank you. Don’t worry. We do have a process to follow up with you if you haven’t implemented by your timelines. So you may be back, or you may not.

Thanks again, and we’ll take a couple-minutes break just to switch out again.

The committee recessed from 1:35 p.m. to 1:39 p.m.

[Peter Milobar in the chair.]

Peter Milobar (Chair): We are now on the consideration of the Office of the Auditor General’s financial audit coverage plan for the fiscal years ending 2027, 2028 and 2029.

I will turn it over to the team from the Auditor General.

Financial Audit Coverage Plan

Sheila Dodds: Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to present our financial audit coverage plan for the three years ending 2027, ’28 and ’29.

Today I have with me Lisa Moore, who is the assistant Auditor General responsible for our financial audit practice, and Molly Pearce, who is a principal in our financial audit team.

[1:40 p.m.]

The Auditor General is mandated to conduct the annual audit of government summary financial statements. The summary financial statements consolidate the financial results for what is referred to in our accounting standards as the government reporting entity. That government reporting entity here consists of central government, which is mainly the ministries, as well as 138 controlled government organizations. Those include Crown corporations, health authorities, school districts, universities and colleges.

The audit of the summary financial statements is the largest financial audit in the province. It’s completed through the combined work of my office and the work of private sector accounting firms, who are appointed by the individual government organizations to audit their financial statements.

The Auditor General Act requires that the Auditor General provide to the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, during each fiscal year of the government, a plan for the appointment of auditors for government organizations for the following three years.

This coverage plan is the one for the next three years, and we are presenting it here for your approval, as required by section 10 of the Auditor General Act.

Before I turn it over to Molly to walk you through the details of this plan, I would like to acknowledge the effort of the many staff in our office who contributed to putting this plan together. With that, I’m going to pass it over to Molly.

Molly Pearce: Thank you, Sheila.

Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee. We are here seeking the approval of our financial audit coverage plan for fiscal years ending 2027, 2028 and 2029.

The Office of the Auditor General is responsible for the overall audit of the summary financial statements. Canadian generally accepted auditing standards require us to be sufficiently and appropriately involved in the audits of the government organizations consolidated into the summary financial statements. Our coverage plan has been developed to provide us with the appropriate understanding of government and its environment necessary for our audit of the province’s summary financial statements.

In deciding our level of audit involvement with each government organization, we look at risk factors, including complexity, level of public interest, financial size and likelihood of issues that would materially affect the summary financial statements. We look at these risks both at the individual organizational level and at the sector level — for example, the health sector. We also look at the capacity of our office.

The Auditor General Act appoints the Auditor General as the auditor of each ministry, offices of the Legislature and other funds or appropriations that form part of the consolidated revenue fund. The Auditor General Act also provides for the Auditor General to elect to be the auditor of any government organization that is consolidated into the summary financial statements. Currently there are 138 organizations that have their own annual audited financial statements that are consolidated into the summary financial statements.

We have three different levels of involvement in financial statement audits of government organizations: direct, oversight and limited involvement.

Where we have elected to be the auditor of a government organization, we refer to this as “direct” involvement. We conduct these audits with our own staff. In 2027, we will have direct involvement in ten government organizations.

“Oversight” involvement refers to when an appointed auditor conducts the financial statement audit and our office performs oversight by conducting extended procedures that enhance our understanding of the financial statements and audit results. We will have oversight involvement with the financial audits of 23 government organizations in 2027.

“Limited” involvement refers to when an appointed auditor conducts the financial statement audit and there is no fieldwork done by our office. We do, however, communicate with the appointed auditor and may direct audit work as required. In 2027, we will have limited involvement in the remaining 105 government organizations.

Section 10(7) of the Auditor General Act allows us to request to be appointed as auditor of a government organization for a period of more than five consecutive fiscal years. In fulfilling our mandate, we balance the benefits achieved through auditor rotation with professional standards that require us to maintain appropriate knowledge and experience. This provision in our act recognizes the need to manage the risk of auditor independence by providing a mechanism to extend the Auditor General’s involvement beyond five years where necessary.

[1:45 p.m.]

Where we have been auditor of a government organization for more than seven years, we employ senior staff rotation and other safeguards. This is required by auditing standards. This ensures our audit objectivity is maintained. Additionally, the eight-year mandate of the Auditor General also acts as a safeguard to maintain independence.

In the preparation of this plan, we reviewed each audit of a government organization where our direct involvement exceeded five years and considered if rotation to another appointed auditor would be necessary.

As presented on page 9 of the report, our plan includes the request to continue as the auditor of the B.C. Transportation Financing Authority. This organization holds a significant portion of the province’s capital assets and is closely connected to the Ministry of Transportation and Transit. As a result, there are efficiencies with us, as the auditor of the ministry, in performing the audit.

For organizations outside the government reporting entity, the Auditor General Act allows us to be the appointed auditor of an organization that is not part of the summary financial statements, with the consent of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

As noted on page 10 of the report, our plan includes the request to continue with one engagement outside of the government reporting entity: the provincial employees community services fund. This is a small charitable employee trust that collects donations from provincial employees and distributes them to B.C. charities. We conduct the review of their annual financial statements and do not charge a fee for this work.

We would also like to highlight that there have been two changes to our proposed coverage from what was included in our last financial audit coverage plan. The changes are outlined on page 10 of the report. These are, in fiscal 2027, that our involvement with the Provincial Health Services Authority will move from direct to oversight involvement; and in fiscal 2027, our involvement with Northern Health Authority will move from oversight to direct involvement.

Northern Health Authority’s contract with their appointed auditor concludes after the year ending March 2026. We are proposing to take over the audit of Northern Health Authority a year earlier than presented in our last fiscal audit coverage plan to coincide with the timing of their existing contract.

I will turn your attention now to page 12 of the plan, where you will find a summary table of our proposed audit coverage for the next three fiscal years of the 138 government organizations consolidated into the summary financial statements. This table summarizes the detailed plan which is presented in appendix A, starting on page 15 of the document.

We have not included trust funds in this table as the trust funds are not consolidated into the summary financial statements. Trust funds are included by note disclosure only.

We have grouped the 138 government organizations by organization type, including school districts, post-secondary institutions, health authorities, hospital societies and Crown corporations. This is done so that the coverage is easily determinable across similar organizations.

Our approach for each grouping of similar organizations is to rotate our involvement across all organizations. For some organizations, we will always have direct or oversight involvement, and for others, our involvement will rotate from limited to oversight.

We determine the rotation and level of involvement by considering past involvement, size of the organization, risks and the organization’s geographical location. We also communicate with the appointed auditors of all the government organizations to ensure that a change in audit involvement will not impede their current audit contracts.

Risks of material misstatement to the summary financial statements are also considered when determining the office’s level of audit involvement. To meet Canadian auditing standards, we ensure that we have, at minimum, an oversight level of involvement with all government organizations that are material to the summary financial statements.

That said, we do rotate our involvement in government organizations with a lower risk and size. These are not chosen to address a specific risk, but rather to provide us with the appropriate understanding of government and its environment and ensure cross-sector and geographical coverage.

For school districts, our plan is to audit three school districts directly and have oversight involvement in four school districts.

[1:50 p.m.]

For the post-secondary sector, we plan to audit Simon Fraser University directly for the duration of the plan. In addition, we plan to have an oversight role in five organizations within the sector — spread across universities, colleges or institutes — each year of the plan.

For health authorities and hospital societies, we plan to audit the Northern Health Authority, starting in fiscal 2027, and have an oversight level of involvement with the Provincial Health Services Authority audit. We also plan to have an oversight role in four other health authorities and one hospital society in each year of the plan.

We plan to audit four Crown corporations directly in each year of this plan. We also plan to have an oversight role in eight or nine Crown corporations across various sectors during each year of the three-year plan.

Lastly, I will turn your attention to appendix B, starting on page 20. This appendix lists other engagements in 2026 that we are directly involved with due to professional obligations that flow from being the financial statement auditor for government organizations. This includes auditing statements and claims related to provincial-federal cost-sharing agreements, and it also includes where we are required to audit the financial statements for subsidiaries of a government organization where we are the appointed auditor.

That concludes the overview of the plan. I will now turn it back to Sheila for closing comments.

Sheila Dodds: Thank you, Molly, for the comprehensive overview of this plan. As required by section 10 of the Auditor General Act, we are seeking your approval of this financial audit coverage plan for the fiscal years ended 2027, 2028 and 2029.

In conclusion, we do appreciate your consideration of the plan, and we welcome any questions or comments. Thank you.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Before we get to any potential vote or potential amendments, are there any questions around the plan?

Larry Neufeld: Thank you for the presentation. With respect to Northern Health and moving the timeline up by a year, what difference, if any, with the level of audit…? What difference would that make, in terms of the public being assured of the oversight of the expenditures of Northern Health? Would there be any change at all?

Sheila Dodds: For the Northern Health Authority, they do have a firm that’s auditing their financial statements at this point in time. What we had proposed in the last plan was that that firm would continue for another year, and we would take over that audit in 2028. Because of the timing of the contract they have with the firm, it made more sense for us to start the audit a year earlier.

In terms of coverage, oversight and audit of the financial statements, there’s no difference whatsoever. We do have the oversight of that appointed auditor, but this is moving that rotation process of taking over the audit.

Larry Neufeld: So it won’t change any…? It won’t be more rigorous or less rigorous? In terms of an audit, there won’t be any different standard?

Sheila Dodds: Yeah, the firms in our office follow the same generally accepted auditing assurance standards.

Larry Neufeld: Okay, thank you.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Any other questions? Any possible amendments? Then we have two motions.

Kiel Giddens: I move that the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, pursuant to sections 10 and 14 of the Auditor General Act, approve the financial audit coverage plan for fiscal years ending in 2027, 2028 and 2029, as presented on November 28, 2025.

Motion approved.

Dana Lajeunesse: I move that should the Office of the Auditor General determine that amendments to the financial audit coverage plan for fiscal years ending 2027, 2028 and 2029 are required, the Office of the Auditor General will return to the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts with any such amendments.

Motion approved.

Sheila Dodds: I wish the audit was that easy.

[1:55 p.m.]

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): If I could ask a quick question — it’s not related to the plan — when you choose whom you’re going to have direct involvement with and oversight, I know you talked about a number of factors.

But is there ever…? You know, somebody suggests that you should — from the outside, because I know that we don’t…. But is there ever sort of a look at things that have hit the media, and: “Oh, maybe this means that we should have a better look at it”? Are there other factors that influence how you decide what entities you’re going to be auditing?

Sheila Dodds: Maybe I’ll start, and then I can turn it over, but I will say that, yeah, we look at all sorts of risk factors. So if we hear of concerns around potential financial mismanagement or there are media stories on an organization that’s in that 138, we will look at that, and you may find that we will adjust our plan, with your approval, to look at our rotation and directly audit an organization that we hadn’t planned to previously.

Do you want to add anything there?

Lisa Moore: I can just add that we do…. So under the auditing standards, there are requirements of what entities we would have to look at in this group audit that we carry out for the summary financial statements. So there is a basis there where we have to either directly be the audit or do that oversight work, where we have that extra involvement with the firms that are auditing the entities. So there’s that requirement.

Then, as Sheila said, we do look at all sorts of risk factors that come to our attention, whether it be through even public inquiry or various things. Depending on what comes forward, it may or may not change the financial statement audit plan. It could also change some of our performance audit work, depending on if we have changed the plan in the past, come back for approval kind of thing. Sometimes it’s a matter of maybe we just up our oversight work or even go in a year earlier or whatnot or have more conversations with the firms that are there.

We can also, if we don’t want to interfere because they’ve got a contract in place, just increase our communications with the audit firms. We can ask them to do additional procedures as well on our behalf.

Peter Milobar (Chair): Our final agenda item is an information item to formally acknowledge the receipt of follow-up information received from the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and Child Care and Ministry of Health and to make those documents public. This information was provided in response to questions from the committee members during our consideration of the OAG reports on child care licensing capacity and public sector board appointments earlier this year and was previously circulated to the committee.

Is there any other business?

Mable Elmore: I just want to thank you, the Office of the Auditor General presenters. I just want to recognize and appreciate the work that you do. I think it’s critical in terms of the collaboration in working with the various entities and organizations in terms of their participation. We heard that from a number of the folks presenting. They appreciated the process and opportunity to work together and, you know, a separate set of eyes to look on how to improve efficiency and functioning, delivering of services.

I just wanted to acknowledge that. I think it’s critically important and really just helps in terms of improving not only the work that you do but also the functioning of our public service. So I just wanted to acknowledge that. Thank you.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): While we’re acknowledging people, Acting Auditor General Dodds, thank you for your work. I think this might be the last time we see you sitting in front of us in this role, and I’ve just really appreciated the work, as a new MLA, that you’ve been doing. So thank you. Thank you very much for taking on the acting position at a time when we needed it and being supportive to the new person, Bridget.

Peter Milobar (Chair): I’ll echo that. Right out of my script here.

Stephanie Higginson (Deputy Chair): Oh, sorry.

Peter Milobar (Chair): That’s fine. More compliments are better than fewer in this role.

But yes, thank you, Sheila, for your dedication in previous roles and in your acting role to making sure that the public is well served by getting these reports brought forward and well answered. So thank you for that.

With that, I will conclude our meeting and seek a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 1:59 p.m.